


Good Things Fall Apart

by unbecomings



Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bittersweet, F/F, Major Character Injury, Post-Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-08 01:42:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21467983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unbecomings/pseuds/unbecomings
Summary: It's the spring of 2024, and Emily's whole life has imploded around her.
Relationships: Lindsey Horan/Emily Sonnett
Comments: 86
Kudos: 172





	1. prologue.

[i’m coming to terms with a broken heart  
i guess that sometimes good things fall apart]

\----- ----- -----

Some athletes are never the same after they blow out a knee.

Emily Sonnett was not one of them.

She knew it immediately, and she knew that the coaches knew, too. She lay on her back, hands on her face, until Lindsey knelt beside her and pried her hands apart to hold them in her lap. She didn’t even try to get up--she told the trainer what she felt, and within two days she knew she was right. She’d need surgery, she wouldn’t play again that season, but maybe if she tried, if she was lucky, she could make it back for the 2023 World Cup.

But she didn’t.

And she didn’t make it to the Olympics after that, either.

Which is how she ended up here, in an office that always feels just a little bit damp, comforting a sniffling teenager on a college campus.

“I’m just scared that I’ll never run again,” the girl says, pulling frantically at the box of tissues on Emily’s desk. When she started the job with the Pilots she had not anticipated dealing with as much crying as she does now. Within a month she’d bought herself three boxes of Kleenex to keep in or on her desk at all times. She knows for a _fact_ that she didn’t cry this much in college--at least not to her coaches. And she’d never admit how much of the Kleenex was really for her.

“I know,” Emily says, “I completely know the feeling, Lizzy. It’s so hard. But it just happened last month. It’s a long process. You won’t need surgery, right?”

The girl shakes her head. When she reaches up to wipe her eyes, she streaks her mascara, and it gives Emily a strong feeling of deja vu that she’d rather avoid.

“That’s good, that’s great. So it’s, what, like twelve weeks in different casts, then PT?” She will not admit that she googled achilles injuries before Lizzy showed up, trying to figure out what to say.

“Yeah,” Lizzy says.

“Tell you what,” Emily says, fishing in her drawer for a fun-size Snickers, “when the day comes that they clear you to run again, I’ll go with you. You can make me run as long as you want. That’s a promise.”

“_You_?” Lizzy says, but she’s smiling, and Emily feels a rush of relief.

“Me,” Emily says, “even though I swore I’d never run on a treadmill again.”

It’s a lie. She just doesn’t use the University gym because she doesn’t want anyone there to see her scars. Not like they don’t all already know what happened, or at least they could all look it up if they wanted to. Emily feels fairly sure the entire team knows the story, even though the rest of the coaching staff has been nice about avoiding making her some kind of inspirational story. There’s nothing particularly inspirational about it, anyway.

It’s April.

In a few months, most of Emily’s best friends will be at the Olympics, and she’ll be here, recruiting another class of college soccer players for a University that hasn’t won a championship in almost twenty years, a place that’s still clinging to names like Megan Rapinoe and Sophie Schmidt. It’s not that the team is bad, or that the university is bad. It’s just hard to compete with schools like UNC or Florida State or UCLA. It’s been easier, supposedly, since Emily joined the team. She has nothing to compare it to, but she’s heard it, that girls are more likely to come to Portland when they know they’ll have a chance to be coached by Emily Sonnett, Olympian. Emily Sonnett, World Champion.

She doesn’t feel like that’s who she is anymore, but a name’s a name, and the team is better than they were. They’ve gone from being ranked in the 40s to being ranked in the 20s, and Emily’s happy to be there, and it’s not their fault that she feels the way she feels. It’s like the emotional equivalent of tossing and turning in bed, trying and failing to get comfortable. 

(She’s not sure any of them would consider her their best friends anymore, anyway. It’s not like she’s spoken to most of them over the past two months. And it’s not their fault, Lindsey’s still their teammate and Emily isn’t, so of course they’re going to be on Lindsey’s side. Not that there are sides. Lindsey had been very clear about that.)

Eventually, Emily draws a laugh from Lizzy, and when she’s alone again she can pack up and go home. Her new apartment is only half-moved-into and doesn’t _feel_ like home, but her room is just messy enough to feel lived-in, and the idea of crawling into bed is too tempting to resist. She should really unpack, cook some dinner, do something productive with herself. She should try to go for a jog, or at least do some upper body weights and stretching, but she won’t.

When she steps outside into the spring rain, her knee starts to ache.


	2. this isn't like the first time anymore (and i've been chasing that too long)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emily gets a phone call that forces her to make a move.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title/lyrics taken from 'A Youth Written in Fire' by Snow Patrol. Come yell at me about this or anything else on twitter/curiouscat @unbecomings_ :)

[but these days   
my heart feels too heavy  
and those days   
are someone else's life]

**-April 2020-**

The field is only lit by a pair of floodlights. They’re practicing volleys, with Emily sending the ball from different spots and different angles and Lindsey aiming for different parts of a net she’s already torn a hole in. It’s cool and wet and they end up playing one v. one, wrestling each other for a ball, talking shit. 

Lindsey kicks her in the ankle and Emily topples over, clawing at Lindsey’s sweatshirt on the way down. Lindsey doesn’t fall, but she goes to her knees anyway, bracing herself with a hand on Emily’s shoulder while she laughs. When she opens her eyes she catches Emily staring at her lips and leans down to kiss her, and Emily kisses her back.

**-April 2024-**

It’s Wednesday and Emily knows she needs to do better. She’s in bed like she wanted to be, watching something mindless on her computer with some takeout veggie stir-fry as if she’s 25 again, with a pile of recruiting paperwork on her desk and two half-unpacked suitcases on the other side of the room.

She’ll do better on Monday. She’ll use the weekend to get her shit together and on Monday she’ll be a different person. A better version of herself who will wake up, make herself breakfast, and stretch. A better version of herself who will call her mom and buy a damn vacuum. She could swear that there’s a Netflix show about this.

She hates this time of year. Spring in Portland will always feel like potential to her--the beginning of the NWSL season, the months leading up to the Olympics, the kind of weather that makes you want to fall in love with someone.

That’s what she’s thinking when her phone rings, and when she sees that it’s her sister, she fights the urge to ignore it for ten full seconds before she picks it up.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hi,” Emma says, “how are you doing? How’s your knee?”

“Fine,” Emily says, even though it aches when she says it.

“Cool,” Emma says, “great, we’ll need your dance moves next month.”

Emily doesn’t respond to that. She knows she won’t be dancing and that it won’t have anything to do with her knee. She hasn’t spoken to Emma much since she had surgery, and she doesn’t really remember much of that. She knows that Emma and her mom were in Portland for a few days, but the combination of the pain meds and whatever was going on with her mental state has left that area of her memory a blur, and she doesn’t want to fight that.

“Listen,” Emma says, “I don’t want to keep you, I just thought I should call you, I have something to tell you about the wedding plans.”

“Don’t you have a maid of honor to do that for you?” Emily asks, and it comes out much more bitterly than she anticipated. She’s not _that_ upset about it. She’s not _that_ jealous. __

_ _“Are you still mad I didn’t pick you?” Emma asks, and she sounds startled, but not as sorry as Emily wants her to._ _

_ _“No,” Emily lies._ _

_ _“Good,” Emma continues, completely missing Emily’s tone in her pre-wedding bliss-brained state, “okay, so listen, apparently they gave you guys a queen suite instead of a king suite. I told Bri that you probably wouldn’t care, but I figured I should call and let you know anyway so you’re not like, shocked.”_ _

_ _Fuck._ _

_ _Emily’s brain stops functioning for a second. Long enough for Emma to pick up on it._ _

_ _“Emily?” she says, and Emily snaps back to reality just long enough to respond._ _

_ _“Yeah, yeah,” she says, “no worries, that’s fine.”_ _

_ _She doesn’t say that there’s no ‘you guys’. That there hasn’t been for two months. That somehow in the mess she’s made of her life so far this year she’s completely avoided telling _anyone_ in her family that Lindsey dumped her. Even thinking it makes her want to throw up._ _

_ _“Cool,” Emma says, “you’re the best, I knew you’d be fine with it. Love you, can’t wait to see you.”_ _

_ _“Can’t wait to see you either,” Emily mumbles._ _

_ _“I gotta go,” Emma says, “but I’ll call you Friday? I haven’t gotten to talk to you in a while and I want to catch up.”_ _

_ _“I have practice Friday,” Emily says._ _

_ _“Then after,” Emma insists, and Emily’s heart sinks._ _

_ _She has no choice but to agree to it. She has to get off the phone. When she hangs up she tosses her phone across the room and rolls over, almost knocking her laptop off the bed when she moves to bury her face in her pillow. For the hundredth time since last fall she feels like a teenager again in the worst way. She refuses to cry, but avoiding it just makes her throat and chest hurt until she has to get up and walk it off._ _

_ _It’s still raining. Out of habit Emily turns left outside the building, and she only stops once she makes it to the coffeeshop and realizes that she can’t go inside. It’s not open at 6:30 on a weekday, but even if it was, Emily’s not sure she could stomach it. Even walking past it makes the threat of tears come back, just glancing at the table in the window where they used to sit, a table where she has countless pictures of Lindsey with a coffee or avocado toast. Not just Lindsey--Caitlin and Ellie and Hayley, and Rose and Mal when they were in town. She should have turned right._ _

_ _She ends up in a library. She hasn’t been in one since college, and she hasn’t been in a public library since she was little. The stacks make her feel that size again, dwarfed by things she doesn’t know and books she knows that she won’t read. She wanders until her heart stops racing and peters out in the Russian audiobook section, listening to the sound of her own heartbeat and someone shelving books a few rows down._ _

_ _She has two options. Three if she includes disappearing into the wilderness and throwing her electronics into the Willamette. _ _

_ _One: she tells her family what happened, or some version of it, and goes to Emma’s wedding—her _twin’s_ wedding—alone. _ _

_ _Two: she lies. She either comes up with a reason Lindsey can’t come or…_ _

_ _“No,” she mumbles out loud. _ _

_ _“Can I help you?” someone asks, and Emily almost jumps out of her skin._ _

_ _“Um, no, sorry,” she says, “I got turned around.”_ _

_ _She ends up leaving with a pair of mystery novels she might actually read, if only to avoid her own life. _ _

_ _ **-September 2022-** _ _

_ _“Em,” Lindsey says, smoothing Emily’s hair back from her forehead, “you should eat something so you can take more pain meds, ‘kay?”_ _

_ _Emily looks away from the TV and up at Lindsey, noticing for the first time the bags under her eyes, the deepening lines around her mouth._ _

_ _“Hey,” Emily says, “don’t worry about me, okay? I’ll be okay. They said the surgery went great.”_ _

_ _Lindsey sinks onto the couch next to Emily, who shifts to lie in Lindsey’s lap, keeping her leg still. Her knee aches, but it’s distant right now, fuzzy, and she knows that won’t last. It scares her, but it scares her less with Lindsey here, stroking a hand through her greasy hair. She hasn’t showered since the surgery; she really should but the idea of trying to figure it out with her knee is exhausting._ _

_ _“Linds,” Emily says, “It’s only September. I could be ready for the World Cup.”_ _

_ _Lindsey doesn’t say anything, just tucks some of Emily’s hair behind her ear._ _

_ _“Right?” _ _

_ _She can hear how fragile her own voice sounds. Lindsey’s knuckles brush across her cheek and Emily realizes she’s much closer to crying than she meant to get. She knows, theoretically, that it’s possible. She needs to know that Lindsey believes it, so she can believe it, too._ _

_ _“Right,” Lindsey murmurs, but it doesn’t feel as good as Emily wanted it to feel._ _

_ _ **-April 2024-** _ _

_ _The posters announcing the start of the Thorns season are everywhere. Emily can’t avoid them, and she knows because she’s tried. All of her Thorns stuff is in a box somewhere in her apartment, which is one of many reasons she hasn’t tried to unpack most of them._ _

_ _She sees Lindsey everywhere. Captain Lindsey Horan, bringing the Thorns back to exact revenge against Louisville. Captain Lindsey Horan, 2x NWSL MVP. Captain Lindsey Horan, Ballon d’Or winner, Olympian, World Champion._ _

_ _“They airbrushed the hell out of you,” Emily mumbles when she passes an image of Lindsey on her way to her TriMet stop._ _

_ _Eventually she knows she’s going to have to make a decision. She can’t put it off forever. Unlike the other things in her life that she’s avoiding, this one actually does have a deadline. She tries to put it out of her mind, but at practice she’s watching her players warm up and gets sucked right back into it. At some point she needs to figure out what the fuck to do about this wedding._ _

_ _“You going to the Thorns home opener?” one of them asks, and the girl she’s passing with makes a face._ _

_ _“Duh,” she says, “I’m at every home game, come on.”_ _

_ _Emily wanders off, focusing on another group, and tries to forget about it. She’s almost succeeded when the head coach corners her. She forces a smile, leaning down to scoop up some cones._ _

_ _“You got something in the mail,” her boss says, “some comp tickets to the Thorns game.”_ _

_ _“Ah,” Emily says. Fucking _of course_ she did. Why Lindsey would think Emily would want to go is beyond her limited imagination. She knows Lindsey well enough to know that Lindsey wasn’t trying to rub it in, but it feels awfully rubbed in._ _

_ _“How many?” Emily asks._ _

_ _“Three,” her boss says. As if Emily knows three people in Portland who aren’t on the Thorns._ _

_ _“You can have them,” Emily says, “take your family.”_ _

_ _Her resentment simmers throughout practice, watching her players complete drills that she’d be hesitant to try on her own. She takes one shot with her right leg and feels the twinge in her knee immediately. It doesn’t scare her anymore--it’s not like there’s anything she could lose by blowing out her knee a third time--but it does piss her off, and then she gets more annoyed at herself. Of course her knee feels like shit. It’s not like she does any of the things she’s supposed to do to rehab it._ _

_ _By the end of practice, while she waits for her bus home and ignores the feeling of poster-Lindsey staring over her shoulder, she knows she’s mad enough to do something truly stupid._ _

_ _ **-December 2023-** _ _

_ _The last time they were in Paris, they won a World Cup._ _

_ _Emily knows that Lindsey has complicated feelings about France. Even with the memory of the 2019 World Cup, it’s obvious in the way that she holds herself the second they enter the building. She makes herself smaller, she falls quiet, she goes somewhere else._ _

_ _“Hey,” Emily says, nudging Lindsey’s elbow, “you’re one of the fifteen best female soccer players in the world.”_ _

_ _Lindsey half-smiles, but she doesn’t say anything._ _

_ _“Is that Messi over there?” Emily tries, but that doesn’t work, either._ _

_ _“I don’t really care if I win or not,” Lindsey says, “I don’t even think I want to win, I just want to go home.”_ _

_ _Emily feels the burning start in her chest and move down to her stomach. It’s an ugly, angry twist in her gut that makes her lean back in her seat and look straight ahead so she doesn’t have to look at Lindsey’s face, at how Lindsey has the gall to look and sound like a victim._ _

_ _“You have no idea how lucky you are to be here,” Emily says._ _

_ _She regrets it immediately, but she has no idea how to address it or what to say. She’s right--that’s the problem--but she knows she shouldn’t have said it, and she knows it’s not _Lindsey_ she’s angry at, but there’s nothing to be done about it now, with the ceremony starting and hundreds of people around them. She reaches for Lindsey’s hand and squeezes it, and Lindsey lets her, but here eyes stay straight ahead and she doesn’t squeeze Emily’s hand back._ _

_ _When she stands to accept the award, she makes brief eye contact with Emily before she walks down the aisle and steps onstage, and it feels like she’s miles and years removed from Emily, stuck in her seat with a brace on her knee and a hole in her heart that she can’t even pretend to know how to fill._ _

_ _ **-April 2024-** _ _

_ _It takes her 3 tries and a shot of whiskey to actually make the phone call._ _

_ _Lindsey picks up on the fourth ring, right as Emily was thinking it would go to voicemail. If it had, she would have made some bullshit up for the message and cut her losses. Instead, Lindsey answers, and all of the breath leaves Emily’s lungs as if she’s been punched._ _

_ _“Emily?”_ _

_ _It’s somehow the worst and best thing that Emily’s heard in months. She can’t remember the last time Lindsey used her nickname, or the last time she deserved it. Somehow it’s hard to believe that Lindsey’s still real, and not just an image on a poster or something Emily’s imagination conjured up._ _

_ _“Hey,” Emily says. The rest of the sentence she rehearsed for an hour dies in her throat. She can hear Lindsey shifting around on the other end of the line and imagines her on the couch, curled up with her legs under her._ _

_ _“Are you okay?” Lindsey asks, and Emily closes her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose. It’s so Lindsey to even ask her that. She hasn’t been okay in months, maybe years, but of course Lindsey would still ask. As if she cares. The worst part about it is that she might actually still care, on some level. She’s a good enough person to still give a shit._ _

_ _“Emma’s getting married,” Emily says, “next month.”_ _

_ _“Yeah,” Lindsey says, “I remember.”_ _

_ _Of course she remembers._ _

_ _“They booked us a queen suite,” Emily says. “She called me to tell me it was a queen and not a king. And I realized when she called me that I--I mean--I was so busy and so much was going on, and I--”_ _

_ _“You didn’t tell her,” Lindsey realizes out loud._ _

_ _“It wasn’t high on my priority list,” Emily says._ _

_ _“I’m not attacking you,” Lindsey says, and Emily almost cries. Whether it’s frustration or something else, she wouldn’t be able to say._ _

_ _“I don’t blame you,” Lindsey says, “I get it. What I don’t get is why you called to tell me you haven’t told your family that we broke up yet.”_ _

_ _“That’s not what I called for,” Emily says. She takes a deep breath and tries to let go of the tension in her chest on the exhale. She knows that if this is going to work, she’s going to have to let Lindsey see and hear some things she _does not_ want Lindsey--or anyone--to see and hear. But it’ll be worth it to avoid the fallout of ruining Emma’s wedding with her crisis._ _

_ _“I called because I...wanted to see if you were interested in maybe going next month,” Emily blurts. “If it still works in your schedule...I know you already got the dress and everything, and my family loves you so much, probably more than they even like me, and it would mean so much to Emma and everyone else for you to be there. And I would owe you so much, so fucking much, like forever.”_ _

_ _Not that she doesn’t already. Neither of them says that part._ _

_ _“You want me to pretend we’re still—?” the question remains unfinished like that, looking over her, and Emily stares wistfully at the whiskey, wanting another shot but knowing Lindsey will be able to hear it in her voice. _ _

_ _“I just don’t want to ruin her wedding,” Emily says honestly. “I’ve fucked up everything else good in my life, you know? And I want..to do this right for her. I just want there to be no surprises or anything. I want it to be exactly the way she imagined.”_ _

_ _Lindsey is silent, and Emily starts to panic. It makes her ramble, and some part of her brain wonders why she wasn’t more like this when Lindsey was breaking up with her. Back then the words wouldn’t come, and now she can’t stop them. _ _

_ _“I know it’s unfair for me to even ask,” Emily says, “and I’ll do whatever you want, even if it’s--even if you want me to lose your number, or move out of the city, or whatever. Anything. I just...need to get this right.”_ _

_ _“I’m not doing this for you,” Lindsey says, “let me be clear. I’m doing this for Emma and for your family because they were always good to me and because I love them.”_ _

_ _The insinuation being, of course, that Emily was _not_ always good to her. Emily wants to defend herself, but only for a moment. She knows that it’s true. She knows that she deserves this--all of it--and that she doesn’t deserve Lindsey doing this favor for her. _ _

_ _“I’ll never bother you again,” Emily says, “you can block my number, anything.”_ _

_ _“I don’t want that,” Lindsey says quietly, “I never wanted that.”_ _

_ _“I’ll get you an edible arrangement,” Emily chokes out, realizing she really is on the verge of tears, “whatever you want, thank you.”_ _

_ _She almost says ‘I love you.’ She catches herself at the last second, but she can still hear it, and she knows that Lindsey can, too._ _

_ _“Thank you,” Emily repeats instead._ _


	3. lot of miles lot of falls (i'm still finding out who i am)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emily isn’t exactly surprised when Rose calls her the next morning.
> 
> “Hi,” Emily says.
> 
> “What the fuck?” Rose asks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I should apologize for this one but I won't. However, you can come yell at me on Twitter as usual (@unbecomings_), I definitely deserve it.

[don’t you tread on me  
i could hardly sleep, so i don’t  
and i could hardly speak, so i won’t]

**-February 2024-**

Emily hasn’t slept in 3 days.

She’s dozed, but every time she gets close to a deep sleep she remembers the mess she’s made of her life and wakes up with a wrenching in her stomach and a headache like she has a hangover.

Actually, she probably does have a hangover. And she probably should drink something other than beer today. She’d gone next door to her new apartment and gotten a six pack of Natty Ice because she actually does hate herself exactly that much. She drank four. The other two are under her futon, the only item of furniture that’s currently in her apartment. 

When she shows up to the apartment that used to be theirs, she spends two minutes in the car trying not to throw up or cry before she can get out. She has keys, still, but she knows better than to use them, so she uses the buzzer, chewing on her thumbnail.

Rose answers the door.

“What the fuck?” Emily says.

“Nice to see you too,” Rose says, crossing her arms.

“Where’s Lindsey?” Emily asks, her stomach churning. “Why are you in town?”

“She has a photoshoot,” Rose says, “she thought you should have some help so she had me stay. And you know why I’m in town, I texted you and left a message. Not my fault if you decided to ignore me.”

Emily has no comeback for that. She definitely did ignore Rose, but she ignored everyone else, too. It’s just something about the door to Lindsey’s apartment opening and Rose being inside--something about Rose being here for Lindsey now that Lindsey has decided she doesn’t want Emily to be. 

“My phone is dead,” she says, digging it out of her pocket to hold it up.

“I bet,” Rose says, and turns her back to the door, disappearing inside and leaving Emily on the threshold. 

**-April 2024-**

Emily isn’t exactly surprised when Rose calls her the next morning.

“Hi,” Emily says.

“What the fuck?” Rose asks.

“You haven’t spoken to me in months,” Emily reminds mer, and Rose scoffs.

“Because you--forget it. This isn’t about me.” 

That’s when Emily knows she’s really in for it. She sighs, pushing a hand through her hair, and glances at her running shoes in the foyer. She normally just wears them to practice. She hasn’t actually been for a run since Lindsey broke up with her.

“I was going to go for a run,” Emily says, “do you need something?”

“Don’t play dumb,” Rose says, “you’re making Lindsey go to Emma’s wedding? As your _date_?” 

“I can’t make Lindsey do anything,” Emily says, “clearly.”

“God, you are insufferable,” Rose says, “you feel so bad for yourself but you won’t let anyone help you because you _like_ feeling sorry for yourself.”

“I tore the same ACL twice, lost my career, and got dumped by the love of my life,” Emily snaps, “I think if anyone’s allowed to feel bad for themselves—“

They both fall silent. Emily realizes that she’s crying and wipes her eyes angrily, almost dropping her phone in the process. But she doesn’t hang up. 

“I’m sorry,” Rose says, “I shouldn’t have said that. That was mean, I’m not trying to say you don’t get to be upset, just...stop jerking her around, you have to leave her alone after this, Son. She still cares so much about you, it fucks her up, and you can control that.”

“I can’t control shit,” Emily says. She’s realizing all over again that she hasn’t spoken to anyone since she moved out. She feels like nobody made an effort, but if she really thinks about it she knows that’s not true. She fucked up her life and she fucked up everyone’s attempts to help her. It makes her angry, and the anger feels good. It feels alive. 

“You can,” Rose says, “you can let her move on.”

The anger coils in her gut like a spring and then snaps, and Emily snaps with it. 

“Yeah,” she spits, “right on to you.”

Rose hangs up on her.

Emily leaves her phone at home, laces up her shoes, and goes for a jog in the frost. 

It’s not that Emily necessarily believes that Rose and Lindsey are doing anything together. Emily knows Lindsey well enough to know--or more or less know--that Lindsey wouldn’t do that to her, no matter what she said or did before or during the breakup. It’s only been two months. Lindsey is almost definitely not seeing anyone, and she’s _definitely_ not seeing Rose.

But she could. There’s nothing stopping her. Rose is there and Emily’s not. Rose isn’t physically in Portland, but she’s there emotionally in a way Emily hasn’t been since at least November. She’s known Lindsey just as long and she’s still on the national team and she’ll be at the Olympics by Lindsey’s side while Emily is doing...whatever she’s doing. And maybe Lindsey should date Rose. Maybe Lindsey should have been dating Rose all along.

Emily makes it three quarters of a mile before she takes a step and her knee throbs so badly that she thinks she’s blown it again. She wobbles to a stop and stands straight and still, breathing hard, waiting for the feeling to pass. When it does, she bends her knee experimentally, then leans onto that foot and lets out a half-sob of relief when it feels fine.

She walks home.

**-November 2023-**

Lindsey is with her when she kicks a ball again for the first time.

She’s still not really allowed to do much, but she’s okay to kick the ball again. And it’s Lindsey who gets her out of the house, Lindsey who finds them an empty field, Lindsey who pumps the ball full of air and reaches over to tuck Emily’s tag back into her shirt.

It’s been a month, a week and two days since Emily tore her ACL. If she’s careful, if she’s lucky, she’ll be running again next month. Slowly. _Jogging_. She hates that word. She hates the concept. She hates all of it, but it’s hard to feel like that when Lindsey’s smiling at her, kicking the ball up, juggling it once with her knee and letting it fall.

“Ready?” she asks, and Emily nods. 

“Don’t stare at my chicken legs,” she accuses, when Lindsey kicks the ball her way. She stops it with her good foot, passes it over to her bad leg, and takes a breath.

“I love your chicken legs,” Lindsey says, and Emily passes the ball right back to her feet.

**-April 2024-**

After Emily has called Lindsey once, it becomes almost impossible not to call her again. She’d forgotten how addicting it was to have Lindsey’s attention, but it’s always been that way, she remembers it now. There was a reason she spent years being the class clown of two different teams, just trying to get Lindsey to smile or laugh. Getting Lindsey to really laugh felt better than anything. Getting her first call-up, getting drafted first overall, going to the World Cup, _winning_ the World Cup—nothing made her feel the way Lindsey’s attention made her feel. And it took her three years to understand that was what being in love with someone felt like. 

It’s not really news to her that she’s still in love with Lindsey. She had accepted pretty much immediately after Lindsey dumped her that she was never going to love like that again; that her heart, like her knee, would never quite be the same. But it hadn’t occurred to her in her panic over Emma’s wedding that she had learned how to live without Lindsey’s attention, and that speaking to Lindsey at all would drag her right back into that cycle. 

She makes it a week without caving at all. Some mornings she gets up and almost feels good for a few minutes, like she has her life together. Then she gets out of bed and feels her knee complain and goes to school and thinks about where Lindsey is, what Lindsey’s probably doing. Knowing that Lindsey would probably pick up if she calls is a fact that haunts her, distracts her when she’s filling out recruitment paperwork and planning drills with the other coaches, keeps her entertained when she forces herself onto the stationary bike like she should have been doing for months. 

At the end of the week, she gets out of the shower to a text from Lindsey. 

**Linds**: can we talk? 

Emily’s heart leaps into her throat. 

**Emily**: now?

She deleted their text conversation when Lindsey dumped her. Years and years and years of conversations. This is the first thing in their thread now, and it makes her want to get back in the shower and keep scrubbing. 

**Linds**: doesn’t have to be now, maybe this weekend, we can get coffee or something. just want to talk logistics about next month 

The wedding. The only reason Lindsey’s talking to her at all. Obviously. Emily feels stupid for thinking even for a moment that this might have been something else. 

**Emily**: yeah sure, whenever you want, i’m not busy.

**-January 2024-**

Emily gets the offer letter at nine in the morning. 

Lindsey is taking the day off. Theoretically they’re supposed to go do something together, because they haven’t in a while and Emily can tell that Lindsey’s worried about it. Lindsey’s worried about _her_, always. She has this permanent look on her face like she’s worried Emily’s going to shatter into pieces any second, and the tone of her voice is always too soft, too gentle, the way you talk to a little kid having a tantrum. It makes Emily feel guilty. Or angry. Or both. 

She’s thinking about that when she checks her email and blinks rapidly at the first name in her inbox. 

“What?” Lindsey says from across their kitchen table, “what is it? Is everything okay?”

Half of telling Lindsey is about feeling vindicated. Proving that she isn’t on the verge of falling apart, that Lindsey can stop feeling bad for her. Half of it is just relief. 

“I got the job,” Emily says, locking her phone, “the assistant coaching job, with the Pilots. They just offered it to me.”

“Oh my God,” Lindsey says, her face splitting into a grin Emily hasn’t seen in months, “Em, that’s awesome, that’s amazing!”

“Yeah,” Emily says, “thank God, I can stop sitting around making us both miserable.”

Lindsey’s smile falls and Emily does not feel vindicated anymore. 

“You don’t make me miserable,” Lindsey says, but she _sounds_ miserable. 

“I’m gonna look weird in purple,” Emily says, deflecting, “gonna remind you too much of Louisville, you’re gonna go beast mode on me all the time.”

“C’mere,” Lindsey says, standing up and opening her arms. 

Emily doesn’t resist it, even though there’s a part of her that wants to. She goes to Lindsey and buries her face in Lindsey’s sweatshirt, breathing her in. When she realizes she’s close to tears she squeezes her eyes shut. 

“I’m so proud of you,” Lindsey says. 

Emily opens her mouth to make a joke and Lindsey squeezes her. 

“Shut up,” Lindsey says, “just let me be nice to you. I’m really proud of you for getting this job. It’s not an easy thing to do even if you’re an Olympian. And I know you’re going to kick ass and inspire so many girls the way you inspire me.”

Emily sighs, forcing the tears back down, and squeezes her back. 

“I don’t deserve you.”

**-April 2024-**

They meet at a coffeeshop. 

It’s a new one. Not once with a lot of memories attached. Emily knows Lindsey chose it on purpose. Lindsey shows up in leggings and a new adidas jacket that Emily hasn’t seen yet, in a soft blue that makes her eyes look greener than normal. She’s using one of Emily’s ponytail holders, the blonde ones she never bought for herself even though she preferred them, and Emily hates herself for noticing any of it. She hasn’t seen Lindsey in person since the breakup. It makes her feel sick enough that coffee isn’t all that appetizing. 

“Hi,” Emily says. 

“Hi,” Lindsey replies. 

Lindsey is still real. Lindsey’s life has gone on without Emily. Emily has seen and touched every inch of Lindsey’s skin and she never will again. 

“Might need something stronger than this,” she jokes, and Lindsey blinks at her. 

“I don’t drink anymore,” she says. 

“Oh shit,” Emily says, “sorry.”

“I’m kidding,” Lindsey says, shaking her head. But she’s smiling a little, and Emily has forgotten what that felt like. Her hands are clammy like they’re on a first date. 

“You look good,” Emily blurts, then kicks herself mentally. “Like—rested. I don’t know. Ready for the season?”

“No real NWSL season for me,” Lindsey says, “not really, not if I make the Olympic roster. But...a little bit of one, I guess.”

“If?” Emily asks, maybe a little shrilly. Lindsey drinks her coffee and fixes Emily with this _look_, one she doesn’t quite know how to describe. She used to be confident she could read all of Lindsey’s facial expressions. 

“You’re making the roster,” Emily says, holding the warm mug in both hands, “you just won the fucking Ballon d’Or, Linds, come on. It’s okay to like...believe.”

She knows that’s rich coming from her, even before Lindsey gives her that look again. She really needs to shut up. She doesn’t get to do this anymore, doesn’t get to be supportive and give pep talks and tell Lindsey to believe in her. Lindsey doesn’t want her to. 

“Okay,” Emily says, “logistics. Tell me what you need to know and I’ll try to answer.”

Lindsey sighs and leans back in the booth. Emily tries not to actually look directly at her without being obvious about it. 

“Well first of all,” Lindsey says,”I need to know what color your dress is. Like, as close to the exact—close. So I can match you. Because I returned my dress.”

“You returned it?” Emily asks, and now its Lindsey’s turn to avoid eye contact. She looks out the window at the street but her eyes keep moving. 

“I didn’t want to think about it,” Lindsey says. 

It feels like getting punched in the gut would be kinder. Actually, Emily has experienced getting two-hand punched in the face and this is definitely worse. 

“You don’t have to come,” she squeaks. 

“Stop,” Lindsey says, finally making eye contact again, “I said I would. It just made me sad to keep looking at it so I returned it. What color are you wearing?”

Emily swallows. She drums her fingers on the table until Lindsey looks at them, and then she stops self-consciously. 

“It’s like a teal green,” Emily says.

“Cool,” Lindsey says, “I’ll do a...navy or a coral or something like that.”

“Cool,” Emily echoes. 

“We have one bed, I’m guessing,” Lindsey says. 

“Yes,” Emily says, “but I’ll call the hotel and have them bring us a cot.”

“Okay,” Lindsey says. Emily was sort of hoping Lindsey would fight her on it, say that they could share a bed, but neither of them is that stupid. Lindsey especially. 

“We’re going to pretend to still be together,” Lindsey clarifies. Emily turns bright red. 

“Emily,” Lindsey says, “I agreed to it, I’m just making sure.”

“Yes,” Emily says.

“One condition,” Lindsey says, leaning forward against the table. Emily wants so badly to run away from all of this. She knows Lindsey is about to ask her never to contact her again and she knows she deserves it, but she wants to delay it, wants to drink up as much of this shared space as she can. 

“Anything,” she mumbles.

“You have to tell them. Like, before the roster drops,” Lindsey says, “by late June, early July.”

It would be unfair for things not to be resolved by the time Lindsey leaves for the Olympics. It’s unfair to her that things aren’t resolved _now_. 

“Yes,” Emily says, “I promise.”

Lindsey nods. Emily drinks more of her coffee just to have something to do, but when she puts it down again Lindsey is still silent, studying her. Emily is hyper aware of the bags under her eyes and the fact that she hasn’t washed her hair in four days. 

“Is there anything else you want?” Emily asks. Lindsey looks surprised, then briefly hurt, and Emily wants to die. 

“Not like,” she says, “just—I owe you. I owe you so huge. And I was going to tell them anyway so I still owe you, so if there’s anything you want.”

“I don’t want anything from you,” Lindsey says. 

Tears prick at Emily’s eyes immediately. She nods, blinking rapidly, and Lindsey reaches across the table but Emily avoids her, shuffling so she can stand up. 

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Lindsey says.

“It’s cool,” Emily says, “I just have to go, I’m—I have somewhere to be.”

Lindsey doesn’t say that Emily told her the entire weekend was free. She doesn’t explain how she _did_ mean it. She doesn’t say anything. She just lets Emily leave, again.

**-February 2024-**

“Emily,” Lindsey says, “I just—I love you. So much. But this isn’t working.”

Emily hasn’t taken a full breath in ten minutes. That’s how long ago Lindsey started the process of dumping her. She knows because she can see the microwave behind Lindsey’s head. 

“I guess not,” she says. She knows it isn’t. She doesn’t need Lindsey to tell her that their relationship is as busted as her knee is. 

“You’re my best friend,” Lindsey says. She’s crying and Emily’s crying and there’s so much that Emily wants to say, but every word dies in her throat before it gets to her mouth. She wants to beg Lindsey to stay with her but she knows Lindsey deserves better so she doesn’t. She wants to ask for another chance but she knows she’s already had and blown a dozen. 

“You’re my best friend too,” Emily offers lamely. 

“It’s just the Olympics are coming and I…” Lindsey trails off. Emily gets the gist. 

“Yeah,” she says, “no, you’re right. You need to focus. If you want to go like...to Tobin’s for a sec. I can have most of my stuff gone in an hour or so.”

“I don’t want to do this,” Lindsey sobs. 

Emily knows that’s not true, because Lindsey started it. But she doesn’t want to fight, she can feel the exhaustion creeping in already, and she wants Lindsey to stop crying as soon as possible. The fact that she’s made Lindsey this upset is already going to haunt her for the foreseeable future. Lindsey deserves to get over her and the least she can do is make that easier by going quietly. 

“You’ll be okay,” Emily says, “we’ll be okay. Sometimes life’s just—sometimes things are just...things happen. It’s okay.”

“Where are you gonna go?” Lindsey asks. She’s covering her face in her hands so her voice is muffled. 

“I’ll go to Cait’s for a few days,” Emily says, “and I’ll figure it out from there.”

“I really wanted this to work,” Lindsey says, “but it’s just making both of us so miserable, and I hate that, I hate it so much.”

“Yeah,” Emily says, unfolding her legs and forcing herself off of the couch, “me, too.”

And Lindsey lets her leave. 

**-April 2024-**

When Emily gets home, she goes into the apartment and digs in a box until she finds a piece of Thorns gear. It’s from her first season with the team, her first season playing with Lindsey. It’s just a pair of shorts, but when she finds them she feels a feeling so strong that it scares her, a feeling so strong that makes her hand shake and fills her chest with pressure like a vice. She folds them and puts them in a bag, then does the same with every piece of Thorns gear she can find. 

When she Googles the closest Goodwill and finds that she would have to drive past her old apartment she shoves the bag under the couch instead.


	4. (just say it one more time) even if it’s a lie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Most of their friends are already married. Emma’s going to be married, too. And Emily’s going to be...employed, at least.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s an allusion to sex in this chapter, but no actual sex. 
> 
> title taken from “even if it’s a lie” by matt maltese. 
> 
> come yell at me on twitter @unbeomings_ / at my curiouscat :)

[i’m going darling, i’ll step lightly  
live on as if you still love me  
just say it one more time  
even if it’s a lie ]

**-September 2023-**

Having Lindsey back with the team changes everything. 

They’re not top of the table material, but they’re getting there, and there’s just enough time left in the season that they can make a go at a playoff run if they can hold it together. Emily’s knee feels good, feels normal again, and Lindsey’s back from the World Cup and Emily doesn’t feel inadequate anymore, for the first time since her injury.

And then Emma gets engaged.

“I always thought you’d be first,” she laughs, and she doesn’t mean anything by it but it still stings Emily more than she’d like to admit. Her and Lindsey have been dating longer. She had been thinking about getting a ring, proposing before the World Cup, but then she got hurt and Lindsey made the roster and she didn’t.

“Don’t worry,” Emily jokes, “I won’t propose at your wedding, I promise. I’m a dick, but not _that_ big of a dick.”

“You better propose before then,” Emma says, and Emily thinks it might be a joke, but for all she knows it might also be a threat.

**-April 2024-**

Their plane tickets were bought months ago, before the breakup. When they meet at the gate Lindsey smiles, but it’s a little distant, a little awkward, and Emily knows that’s on her.

“Drinks on me,” Emily says, as they wait to board.

“On the plane?” Lindsey asks.

“All weekend,” Emily says, “I’m dragging you to Georgia, I’ll be providing the booze. It’s only fair.”

“I won’t fight you on that,” Lindsey murmurs, but her smile looks a little looser now, and Emily feels good about it, better than she’s felt in days. 

When they get on the plane Lindsey moves to take the window seat even though it’s the one on Emily’s ticket, and Emily realizes with a jolt that it’s a reflex, borne out of years of Lindsey taking the window because she knows that Emily gets claustrophobic.

“You’re in the aisle,” she mumbles, and Lindsey looks up, surprised. She watches the realization wash across Lindsey’s face, and the hurt that lingers there makes Emily regret saying a word.

“More leg room,” she adds, “you’re taller,” and Lindsey nods and switches places with her, but she doesn’t say a word.

Lindsey ordres a club soda.

“You got real old real fast,” Emily jokes, and Lindsey _does_ smile, a little.

“I know,” Lindsey says, “I think my liver is permanently broken at this point, to be honest. Even thinking about liquor still makes me want to puke.”

“Started in 2019,” Emily says, “it’s because I made you do those shots on the plane back from France.”

“Honestly,” Lindsey laughs, and for a moment, right as the plane starts to pull away from the gate, everything feels like it might be fine.

“How have you been?” Lindsey asks, and the moment passes. Emily picks at a loose thread on her sweater, praying that Lindsey’s not looking at her, not watching the expression on her face that she knows she can’t control.

“Fine,” Emily says, “better. I think. I’m settled in at work now, I like the kids and I think they like me, which is nice.”

“I’m sure they do,” Lindsey says, “must be nice having a college coach who can dab.”

“Dabbing is so old school now,” Emily says, “I think if I dabbed they’d make fun of me forever.”

“Still,” Lindsey says, “I never had a coach as cool as you.”

Emily watches Portland disappear beneath thin clouds as the plane climbs. The claustrophobia starts to set in when the plane bumps a little bit, not enough to jostle anything but enough for her to feel it. She doesn’t ever notice that stuff in the aisle seat, but here, trapped between Lindsey and the window, she feels it.

“You can’t be this nice to me,” Emily says, “or everyone’s gonna know something’s up when we get there.”

Lindsey doesn’t answer, and when Emily turns her head she sees that Lindsey’s headphones are in. She doesn’t know if Lindsey heard her--she’s not making eye contact, scrolling through the movie options on the seatback screen--but she thinks the joke would have fallen flat either way.

When they land, Emily goes to get coffee and buys Lindsey her usual without even thinking about it. Lindsey mumbles a thank you when she hands it over, and Emily leads them to the rental car office, the discomfort settling in her stomach like ice water.

The car is, inexplicably, in Lindsey’s name.

“I don’t remember doing that,” she says, and Emily shrugs.

“I might have,” she says, “I probably wanted you to drive.”

Lindsey holds her hand out for the keys and Emily hands them over, feeling like a scolded child until she can see the glint in Lindsey’s eyes that says she thinks the whole thing is funny.

“Trust me,” she says, “I wanted me to drive, too.”

“Hey!” Emily says, laughing, “I’m not a bad driver.”

“Uh huh,” Lindsey says, “and can you handle the responsibility of an engine this size?”

A few months ago Emily might have made a joke about that. Well, really, a few years ago--a few months ago Emily wouldn’t have felt like it, and here she is, back again, wanting to make a joke and make Lindsey laugh.

**-July 2019-**

They’re lost in New York.

“It’s a grid,” Lindsey mumbles, pressing her fingertips to her temples, “it’s a fucking grid.”

“Hey,” Emily says, “we’re drunk, though, math is hard. Do you have cash?”

Lindsey shakes her head, then shrugs. She sniffles and Emily can tell she’s on the verge of tears; the rest of the team is in a bunch of other places and Lindsey’s phone is dead and Emily’s fell victim to a two-story fall off a balcony in France the night they won the Cup.

“We can take an Uber,” Lindsey says.

“Your phone is dead and mine is,” Emily gestures vaguely, “but seriously, do you have cash?”

Lindsey does have cash, stuffed into her bra, that she finds once Emily makes her sit down on the ledge next to a building that’s so tall it makes her dizzy. Lindsey is making that face she makes when she’s drunk enough to feel sick, and Emily is just sober enough to feel responsible for her, just sober enough to feel the way protectiveness is creeping into her voice when she slings an arm around Lindsey’s shoulder and reassures her.

It’s Emily who hails them a cab. It’s Emily who gets them back to the hotel. It’s Emily who rubs Lindsey’s leg reassuringly in the backseat of the cab while Lindsey tries not to throw up. When Lindsey leans down to rest her head on Emily’s shoulder, pressing her nose against Emily’s jaw, Emily has to take a deep breath and hold it.

Lindsey has a boyfriend.

Emily promises herself to outlast him.

**-April 2024-**

“This is crazy,” Emily says, twenty minutes into the drive.

Lindsey doesn’t answer, and Emily feels the need to elaborate, trying to calm the panic clawing at the inside of her chest, trying to get everything back under control while she still has the time and space to do it.

“Emma getting married,” Emily says, “I still feel like we’re sixteen.”

“He’s a nice guy,” Lindsey says.

“Yeah,” Emily agrees, “but it’s just...weird. To imagine her having a family. Weird to think about how she’s an _adult_ adult. Weird...not to feel like we’re young adults anymore. Like the training wheels are off.”

“I don’t think it’s that weird,” Lindsey says, “most of our…” she clears her throat and Emily feels like her own throat is going to close up. 

“Most of my friends are already married,” Lindsey rephrases, and Emily closes her eyes, leaning back into the seat. 

Most of their friends are already married. Emma’s going to be married, too. And Emily’s going to be...employed, at least. She’s been quiet just long enough for Lindsey to notice, and she knows it even before Lindsey speaks. 

“You okay?” Lindsey asks, and Emily feels a wave of nausea that she knows has more to do with the fact that Lindsey has asked that exact question a million times since Thanksgiving. 

“Carsick,” Emily says.

“Sorry,” Lindsey says, and Emily breathes in through her nose, holds her breath for four seconds, and exhales through her mouth. 

“Me too,” she says, “gonna nap.”

When she wakes up the car is parked. It takes a few seconds for her to understand where she is, through the sound of a gas pump and the cars driving past. When she turns her head she can see Lindsey finishing up, and she lets herself watch in the moments that Lindsey thinks she’s still asleep. 

Lindsey looks good. She looks like she’s ready for the Olympics. Emily can tell that she’s put on some muscle in her shoulders and tries not to think about what Lindsey’s going to look like in a dress. She doesn’t know what her body looks like; she’s avoided looking in the mirror since before Lindsey dumped her. She knows her dress fits, but she also knows she’s going to look so stupid next to Lindsey, so small and pale and doughy. They won’t look like a couple at all. Lindsey looks like she should be dating someone much more fit and better looking. And maybe she should. 

Emily has just thought about Rose again when Lindsey gets back into the car and sees that she’s awake. 

“Hey,” she says, “we’re like fifteen minutes out. You feel okay?”

“Yeah,” Emily says, “I’m good. Thanks for driving.”

“Thanks for not driving,” Lindsey jokes, and Emily rolls her eyes. 

Lindsey digs in her bag for gum, pops some in her mouth and hands some to Emily without asking or hesitating. Emily takes it and for the last fifteen minutes of the drive things almost feel normal. She keeps getting whiplash, going back and forth between feeling like it’s impossible that they were ever together and feeling like she can’t imagine things any other way. When they pull up to their hotel she’s in that space, feeling like the time she’s spent in the new apartment was a fever dream, like their relationship, as imperfect as it might be, is still intact. 

**-April 2020-**

“Should we tell anyone?” Lindsey asks.

Emily lifts her head, raises her eyebrows, then lower her head again, going back to what she was doing. Lindsey squirms under her, reaching down to push Emily’s hair out of her face.

“Em,” she says. 

“Can we talk about this later?” Emily mumbles against Lindsey’s stomach, “I wanna go down on you first. Celebratory.”

“They’re gonna know,” Lindsey says, “no way we can go to the Olympics and pretend not to be—“

“Yeah,” Emily agrees, settling between Lindsey’s thighs, “we should tell them.”

**-April 2024-**

Emily can’t remember how much or how little they used to touch. 

They make it in time for dinner, packed like sardines in the booth of the single decent restaurant in the tiny Georgia town Emma chose to get married in. Lindsey leaves her arm on top of the booth and Emily settles under it and Emily can’t decide if that’s something they would have done before or if she’s paranoid. Nobody looks twice at them all through dinner, because they’re too busy talking about Emma, and Emily should feel relieved. They’re getting away with it and Lindsey is smiling and laughing with Emily’s family like she’s genuinely enjoying herself, but Emily feels sick, suffocated under the weight of Lindsey’s arm. 

Lindsey, in this v-neck sweater that fits her everywhere but in the shoulders and dips just low enough that Emily can catch a glimpse of the beauty mark she knows is there an inch above the cup of Lindsey’s bra. Lindsey, who slips back into this role effortlessly, reminding Emily how easy it was for her to switch things on and off like this. Lindsey who doesn’t want to date her anymore. But she’s so _convincing_. It makes Emily wonder how long Lindsey did this before she fessed up to wanting out. It makes her question everything. 

It makes her really grateful for a glass of red wine. 

Maybe she has two. Maybe she does. So what? Doesn’t she deserve it? Hasn’t she earned it by forcing herself to be here, sparing everyone the drama of her breakup, making sure all the attention can be on Emma the way it’s supposed to be? 

She hasn’t had any alcohol since the night before she picked up her stuff from their apartment. Lindsey’s apartment. And two glasses of wine is, apparently, a lot, because when dinner is over and she unfolds herself from the booth and sways more than she expected to. Lindsey is there in a second, steadying her with a hand on her lower back, and Emily hates herself for leaning back into it. It doesn’t help her, it doesn’t make her feel grounded, it makes her dizzier to have Lindsey’s hand on her at all.

“Hey,” Lindsey says when they get into the parking lot, “let me drive again, okay?”

“I assumed so,” Emily says, “you hate when I drive.”

“I don’t,” Lindsey says, “but you’re--”

“I’m not drunk,” Emily says, but she has to lean into Lindsey’s side to open the car door without losing her balance and she knows they both know better. 

She’s not drunk, but she’s not sober, definitely not sober enough to drive. She spends the five minute drive back to their hotel with her head pressed against the window and her eyes closed, and Lindsey turns down the radio as if she’s going to speak, but she never does.

The sight of the roll-away cot in their room when they walk in makes Emily laugh, and she sits down on the edge of it, trying to hold her shit together. Her life is a joke. In the same hotel room Emma is sleeping alone because it’s bad luck for her husband-to-be to see her the night before her wedding. Emily’s sleeping on a cot in a suite with her ex.

“No wonder you didn’t wanna deal with me,” she says, mostly to herself, knowing Lindsey’s still in earshot, “I don’t even wanna deal with me.”

She’s not sure what she’s expecting Lindsey to do. She’s surprised, though, when Lindsey speaks, startled enough that she jumps and turns her head to look at Lindsey where she stands by the window, aggressively unpacking her toiletries and pajamas.

“Why can’t you just accept that I was trying to help you?” she snaps. Emily is speechless until Lindsey turns around to face her. Lindsey’s face is red, but she doesn’t look angry. More accurately, she doesn’t look like she’s just angry. There’s more to it, something a little bit desperate and hurt in her eyes before she looks away again and Emily loses whatever connection she had.

“By _dumping_ me?” she asks shrilly, and Lindsey’s shoulders slump. She doesn’t look at Emily again when she heads for the bathroom. She doesn’t say a word when she closes the door behind her and Emily flops back onto the cot, feeling dramatic. She places one foot on the ground the way she always was taught to do in college, and the room stops spinning but she doesn’t feel any better. 

When Lindsey reappears she looks like maybe she’s been crying. 

“I’m going to bed,” she says, and to Emily it doesn’t feel like apologizing would do any good, so she doesn’t. 

**-November 2023-**

There’s no question to Emily what her injury is. She knows what it feels like. She knows even though it’s a mostly innocuous thing, crossing the ball to Lindsey on the other side of the field. She knows she should have turned her entire body, but Mal was pressuring her, and it’s so, so stupid.

It’s so stupid to re-tear her ACL like this. In training. When the stakes are this low. When it would have been fine to lose the ball to Mal instead of crossing her right leg across her body for that kick, knowing the strain it would put on her left knee. 

She sits down immediately and puts her head in her hands. Mal hovers but doesn’t say anything, and Lindsey is on her in seconds, kneeling next to her, peeling her hands away from her face. It’s so eerily similar to the first time, except that it’s just them, no score on the scoreboard, no fans.

“Em,” Lindsey says, “talk to me.”

“I fucked up,” Emily says, “I’m so fucking stupid.”

Her knee _hurts_. The strain of keeping herself from crying hurts more. The staff is on her in seconds, and it’s Lindsey’s turn to hover while they ask Emily a series of questions that feel useless. She already knows her knee is done for again, and her annoyance only grows the longer they hem and haw about it, the longer it takes for them to haul her to her feet and help her limp away. She doesn’t look for anyone, doesn’t try to make eye contact with Lindsey, because she knows she’ll break down if she does, and there’s still a week left of camp to go. Lindsey needs that camp. The team needs it. They don’t need to be derailed by Emily’s fragile, aging body. 

Eventually the staff lets her have a minute to herself, and Emily tells herself that she can cry, but the tears won’t come. They’re just starting to prickle in the corners of her eyes when Lindsey appears in the door to the locker room, and every muscle in Emily’s body tightens at once. 

“What are you doing?” she asks, and is immediately aware of how shrill her voice is. Lindsey takes a few steps into the room, then hesitates. 

“Checking on you,” Lindsey murmurs. 

“Go play,” Emily says, “you can’t un-tear my ACL.”

Lindsey looks hurt and it makes Emily hate herself even more. 

“Is that for sure what it is?” Lindsey asks, and Emily almost laughs. 

“Yeah,” she says, “it’s the same knee and I’ve done it before, I know what it feels like. I won’t even be able to run until two months before the Olympics. Maybe longer. It’s worse when they have to reconstruct a second time.”

“I’m sorry,” Lindsey says, kneeling next to Emily’s feet, reaching up to brush some hair out of Emily’s face. “Em, I’m so sorry.”

“I wasn’t a lock to make it anyway,” Emily says, “but you are. So go out there and play, okay?”

It’s the only thing left that she can control—making sure Lindsey goes out there and plays hard and goes to the Olympics the way she deserves. If it means crying alone in the locker room while her teammates try to forget how embarrassing she is, ending her career in a training camp scrimmage like she’s forty, she’ll take it. 

“I don’t want to leave you alone,” Lindsey says, “I want to help.”

Emily knows without having to ask that Lindsey would sit on the locker room floor for hours if she asked. It makes her chest hurt to understand, in that moment, how much Lindsey loves her, and how much she doesn’t deserve it. 

“Yeah, well,” she says, “you can’t. Not right now. All I want right now is for you to go back out there and kick some ass. Go back out there and earn the armband.”

Lindsey doesn’t speak. She wipes her nose with the back of her hand and Emily realizes she’s been crying. Emily reaches for Lindsey’s face, swiping the tears away with her thumbs, then pulls Lindsey in to cradle her head against her chest, just for a moment. When she pushes Lindsey away, gently, she softens it with a kiss to Lindsey’s temple. 

“Go,” Emily says, “do it for me. I’ll be here when you’re done.”

**-April 2024-**

Emily wakes up with a dry mouth and more  
guilt than she could ever have imagined feeling at one time in her life. She sits up, blinking the sleep out of her eyes, and Lindsey blinks back at her. She’s awake, reading a book. It’s 8:30. They have to be downstairs in an hour. 

“Good morning,” Lindsey says evenly, like it’s nothing. 

“Sorry about last night,” Emily says, feeling dirty and messy and humiliated, “I was drunk.”

“I know,” Lindsey says. And then, more gently but with her eyes back on her book, she adds, “you should probably shower before we go down to meet them.”


	5. both hands (please use both hands)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’s not prepared for how beautiful Emma looks in her dress. She’s not prepared for Emma to hug her before the ceremony starts, her arms tight around Emily’s shoulders. She’s not prepared for the glimpse of Lindsey that she gets before she steps into the aisle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait, hope this was worth it! Come yell at me on twitter/curiouscat @ unbecomings_ :) title from ani difranco's "both hands" because i'm a big ol' lesbian.

[I am writing  
Graffiti on your body  
I am drawing the story of  
How hard we tried]

**-October 2023-**

Emily closes her eyes and inhales slowly. It feels like the kind of moment she’ll want to remember. Lindsey rests her head against Emily’s chest and Emily threads her fingers through Lindsey’s hair, tugging just gently enough that it pulls a murmur of appreciation from Lindsey’s throat.

“I love this,” Lindsey mumbles, and Emily knows what she means.

“Me too,” Emily says, tucking her chin so she can kiss the crown of Lindsey’s head.

“I could do this forever,” Lindsey says, “with you.”

Emily swallows. She lets herself imagine, just for a moment, what it might be like to slide a ring onto Lindsey’s finger. And then, as quickly as the thought came to her, she banishes it. She opens her eyes, reaches for Lindsey’s hand, and squeezes it before she slips out of bed to start breakfast.

**-May 2024-**

As a bridesmaid, Emily’s morning is a mess. She doesn’t even know the exact schedule, just that she won’t see Lindsey until the wedding itself, and she knows she should feel relieved, especially after last night. She should be glad she doesn’t have to face Lindsey after the shit she pulled last night, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t feel any less guilty for being an idiot, and on top of that, she...misses Lindsey.

She misses Lindsey. It was so easy to get used to being close to Lindsey again. So easy to get used to being in the same space, and Emily feels like she’s wasted this weekend. The last weekend that she’ll get to be near Lindsey and she’s wasted it being stupid and sitting here while someone straightens her hair.

She just wants to be with Lindsey. She wants to walk around this mostly-empty little Georgia town with Lindsey. She wanted to wake up tucked into Lindsey’s side.

She doesn’t talk much. She doesn’t really know most of Emma’s friends that well, at least not as well as they know each other. Nobody seems to notice that she’s not talking much, because they’re all mostly fawning over Emma, as they should--it’s her day. While they coo over Emma’s updo, touching her hand with fluttering little hands, Emily turns slowly in the floor to ceiling mirror, taking a long look at herself in her dress.

She doesn’t really recognize herself. She’s soft in places she never was before. She has curves in places she didn’t know she could have them, but not in a sexy way; she just feels like she’s looking at some weird alternate-universe version of herself. 

The dress isn’t long enough to cover up her surgery scars. The second one is still ugly and pink and she _hates_ it. She hates that everyone will see it, but she especially hates that Lindsey will see it, see it and be reminded of Emily’s fuckups, of Emily quitting on her career and on them.

She tries not to think about what Lindsey will look like. She tries not to think about what Lindsey’s face will look like when they see each other at the wedding. In the end that makes it worse, which she could have guessed, because she’s not prepared.

She’s not prepared for how beautiful Emma looks in her dress. She’s not prepared for Emma to hug her before the ceremony starts, her arms tight around Emily’s shoulders. She’s not prepared for the glimpse of Lindsey that she gets before she steps into the aisle.

She’s not prepared for the way that Lindsey looks at her when she starts the walk.

Emily doesn’t want to stare so she only spares a glance Lindsey’s way. When she does, Lindsey is beaming. They make eye contact for a brief second and then Lindsey looks away, and Emily can’t be sure but she thinks that Lindsey’s smile has fallen.

Emily spends a lot of the ceremony trying not to listen too hard. She knows that if she does she’ll cry, and she doesn’t want to draw attention away from Emma. Radiantly beautiful Emma in her gorgeous lace wedding dress, with her hair falling in perfect waves over her shoulders. Emily’s standing behind her, which means she can see the look on the groom’s face.

He looks at Emma like she hung the moon. He looks at Emma like she’s the best thing he’s ever seen and Emily believes that it’s true. When he starts to say his vows he tears up, and Emily has to look away to keep herself from doing the same.

“I choose you,” he says. “To stand by your side and sleep in your arms. To be joy to your heart and food for your soul. To learn with you and grow with you, even as time and life change us both. I promise to laugh with you in good times and struggle alongside you in bad times. I promise to respect you and cherish you as an individual, a partner, and an equal, knowing that we do not complete, but complement each other. May we have many adventures and grow old together.”

The crowd erupts when they finally kiss, and Emily almost drops her bouquet clapping along. She feels too much. She’s happy for Emma. She’s sad for herself. She’s jealous of Emma. She’s sick of herself. 

When Emma gets into the limo with her husband and they drive off towards the reception, Emily deflates. Lindsey is at her side in a moment with her fingertips on the small of Emily’s back, and Emily takes a deep breath and holds herself together, just barely.

“It is kind of weird,” Lindsey says, “you were right.”

But she has no idea. It feels like a piece of Emily is missing. Emma’s still her sister and they haven’t lived in the same place for years but this still feels different, sadder, like being left behind.

It’s a feeling Emily knows well by now.

“I’ll get used to it,” Emily mumbles. 

She looks at Lindsey properly for the first time and feels sure she won’t catch her breath for the rest of the night. Lindsey’s navy dress is strapless and Emily can barely tear her eyes away from Lindsey’s shoulders because of it. Lindsey has always been in good shape, but it’s different this time around, maybe because Emily isn’t. Lindsey’s shoulders are broad and tan and toned and Emily wants to run her hands over Lindsey’s arms up to the back of her neck.

“I gotta go in this second limo,” Emily says, “the whole wedding party--”

“Yeah,” Lindsey says, taking her hand back, “no worries, I’ll see you there.”

She hesitates, then leans in and kisses Emily’s cheek. Emily knows her parents and family are watching, so she does her best to act natural, to smile and react the way she thinks she would have months ago. 

“Thank you,” she says, reaching out to squeeze Lindsey’s wrist before she goes, and she hopes that Lindsey knows what she’s being thanked for.

**-August 2020-**

It takes every inch of Emily’s self control not to kiss Lindsey on the field. When they get back into the locker room Lindsey hugs her again, lifting her up and swinging her, and when Emily’s feet are back on the ground she can’t help it. 

They haven’t actually told anyone that they’re together.

But they’re champions and Lindsey is looking at her like she’s the only thing that’s ever mattered in the whole world even while there are medals around their necks. Emily cups Lindsey’s face in her hands and really looks at her, giving her an out if she wants it. She can see the moment that Lindsey processes what emily wants, can see the blush rise in Lindsey’s cheeks and creep down into her neck and chest. 

Lindsey’s smile softens. She nods, just once, barely, and Emily leans up and in to kiss her. 

Everyone was already cheering and yelling, so it’s hard to tell if they’ve been noticed until Emily pulls back and Mal and Rose are right there with them, cackling, spraying champagne all over the four of them. They grab Lindsey and Emily in a group hug and jump up and down and nothing and everything is different. 

Everything is gold. The medals, the champagne, the confetti, Lindsey’s hair and the feeling that grows in Emily’s chest when Lindsey’s laugh fills  
the room and her heart. 

**-May 2024-**

Lindsey is officially famous enough that people they don’t know want to talk to her.

People who obviously know Emma, probably know Emily on some level though she’s sort of forgotten who they are--no less than three of them have come up to Lindsey within the first thirty minutes of the reception to talk to her about the World Cup and the Ballon d’Or and the Olympics, and every single time Emily has wanted to die. Lindsey is so gracious and kind, and so beautiful in that navy dress that makes her eyes seem even lighter and bluer than normal, and Emily is--

It’s not like she doesn’t have a World Cup. It’s not like she doesn’t have an Olympic gold medal. What she’s missing is the attention. She misses being respected, she misses people being proud of her, she misses feeling like she’s important and like people care about her.

The third time someone comes up to Lindsey, she places her hand back on the small of Emily’s back. Emily excuses herself to go talk to someone else, anyone else, because it feels like she’s burning where Lindsey touched her.

Moments later Emma arrives to the raucous applause of the ballroom, hand in hand with her husband. Emily has no choice but to reunite with Lindsey at their table, and Lindsey’s looking at her like she’s about to break down, which makes her feel like she might.

“You’re famous,” Emily says instead, “you wanna sign something for me? I could use the cash from selling a sock or something on eBay.”

“I can do better than a sock,” Lindsey says, “you might as well get the pair.”

Emily manages a smile, and Lindsey smiles back, but she still looks concerned, and Emily can’t say she blames her. 

Lindsey is and always has been a superstar with Emily’s parents. They’re on the other side of the table, which makes it easier to avoid them, until it isn’t.

“Lindsey,” Emily’s dad calls across the table, “when is it going to be your turn?”

“My turn?” Lindsey asks sweetly, like she doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing. She’s giving him a chance not to do it, which is nicer than he deserves. Emily can feel her heart rate pick up. The entire table can hear it, and is paying attention, and Lindsey doesn’t even want her anymore, much less want to marry her.

“Your turn!” Emily’s dad exclaims, “twin weddings.”

“I don’t have to get married just because Emma got married,” Emily says in a way that she hopes comes off as a joke. She knows immediately that it’s fallen flat, though. It mostly sounded like she was snapping at him, which she sort of was. The uncomfortable silence doesn’t last long before Lindsey saves her, like always.

This time Lindsey brushes some hair away from Emily’s neck and smiles at her. 

“When we’re ready,” she says, and the table sort of melts away, and everyone goes back to what they were doing but Emily, who can do nothing but sit as still as possible and try to breathe. Lindsey’s fingertips are still trailing through the hair at the base of her neck. Nobody’s watching them anymore, and it feels unfair.

“I’m gonna go get another drink,” Emily mumbles, and takes her leave.

Lindsey is too convincing. Emily needs the air and the space and the alcohol to remind herself that this _isn’t_ the real thing. She can’t get too comfortable, too used to Lindsey being close and touching her like that, or it’ll feel like getting dumped again when the weekend is over. She’s afraid she’s already going to feel that way. She’s not sure she can handle going through it twice.

When she comes back, a drink in hand that she’s already started, she makes sure to sit on her chair in a way that gives her a little bit more space.

“Sorry,” Lindsey mumbles, leaning in to close the space between them anyway, “sorry if that was too much.”

“It’s fine,” Emily says, “you’re fine. It was, um. Believable.”

Lindsey’s expression changes, but she turns her face away before Emily can get a read on her. Emily’s worried about that when the food arrives and spares her. She knows she won’t be able to avoid Lindsey forever, though, and she still can’t understand how or why she can want to be so close and so far away from Lindsey all at once.

Nobody bothers to keep up a serious conversation while they eat. They slip back into the kind of small talk that Emily is more comfortable with, that allows her to jump in with funny anecdotes or comments here and there so nobody will look too closely at her. Lindsey is mostly quiet, laughing at Emily’s jokes and otherwise avoids saying a word, and Emily’s afraid that’s her fault. Lindsey had been more talkative before, Emily’s sure of it. She _asked_ Lindsey to come here and pretend to be her girlfriend, and now she’s made Lindsey uncomfortable the second Lindsey actually did it. 

Emily feels guilty. That’s primarily why she reaches for Lindsey under the table and places her hand on Lindsey’s knee--to apologize, to reassure her. Lindsey almost chokes on her salad and Emily is sure she’s made things worse, until Lindsey chews thoughtfully, swallows, and turns to look at Emily. She smiles nervously, and Emily taps Lindsey’s knee with her fingers before she takes her hand back.

Everything is fine until it’s not. That’s how it always was with the, that’s how _life_ is, so Emily shouldn’t be so surprised every time the universe fucks her over. And it’s not like she didn’t know there would be dancing at the wedding. She’d just managed not to think about it long enough to realize the implications of there being dancing at the wedding: in a world where she and Lindsey are still in love, everyone would expect them to dance together. That’s the panic she’s living in when Emma takes the dance floor for the first time. She and Lindsey are both two drinks in, and Emily can feel that fact, among others, looming over them.

Emily kind of hates the idea of a father-daughter dance. There’s something about the physical action of the father giving the bride over to the groom that’s always made her feel a little uncomfortable. It’s different watching Emma dance with their dad, though. Everything is different. Everything Emily ever side-eyed as a wedding guest is different here, like she can suddenly see the beauty in all the things she always thought were kind of stupid. Emma looks so happy and so beautiful and their dad looks so proud of her, and Emily can’t get a deep breath in because every muscle in her shoulders and chest has tightened like a vice around her heart.

And that’s before she glances at Lindsey and sees that she’s crying.

“Jesus,” Emily says, reaching blindly for a napkin, “are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Lindsey mumbles, “just--I’m--she looks like you. From the side. And it...makes me sad.”

Emily has no idea how to process that. Her first thought is that Lindsey is drunk. Her second thought is that she, too, is drunk. But they’re not. They’re tipsy. That’s all it took for them to go off the rails, for Lindsey to say this and for Emily to be sitting here, staring at her with her mouth open.

“Sorry,” Lindsey says, and Emily has no idea what Lindsey’s apologizing for. It could be anything.

“No,” Emily says, “it’s cool. It’s cool to cry at weddings. It’s like, normal.”

“Shut up,” Lindsey says, “look, here comes the groom. Oh my God, I’m gonna cry again.”

She doesn’t, though. They watch Emma’s husband twirl her around and both of them fall quiet. 

**-June 2022-**

“Don’t come in here,” Lindsey says. 

Her voice is tight with something, some emotion, and Emily is hesitant immediately. She pauses in the hallway, placing her hand on the wall. Lindsey is in the room that’s supposed to be their dining room. The layout of the apartment is a little weird--it’s an old building--but Emily thought they’d had it figured out, or she wouldn’t have gotten in the shower.

“Babe?” she asks, trying to quell the panic that’s rising in her chest for no reason. It can’t be that serious.

“Don’t,” Lindsey says, and then she stifles a sound that Emily can’t decipher. It’s either a laugh or a sob, she has no idea.

“Come in here,” Lindsey says, and Emily takes a step, then hesitates again.

“Come in there?” she repeats.

“Yeah,” Lindsey says.

“Yes or no? You said don’t--”

“Come here,” Lindsey says, ‘come here.”

Emily steps into the dining room. Lindsey takes one look at her and bursts into hysterical laughter, flopping onto her side on the hardwood floor, helpless. Emily takes in the scene: Lindsey, laughing uncontrollably on the floor; a handful of screws; a screwdriver; scattered instruction papers; a dining chair.

A dining chair built completely, ridiculously fucked up. Backwards and inside out.

“Holy fuck,” Emily laughs, “Linds.”

Lindsey whines through her giggling.

“Lindsey,” Emily says, “it looks like--it’s like a fucking--it’s like if Picasso built a chair.”

“You can technically,” Lindsey gasps, rolling onto her back, “still sit in it.”

“Oh, yeah,” Emily says, “for sure.”

She flips the chair over--the ‘back’ and one set of legs on the ground, the other set of legs serving as the actual back--and sits on it like a stool. Lindsey sits up to look at her, then dissolves into laughter again, burying her head in Emily’s lap. 

Emily looks down at her and wonders what Lindsey’s ring size is.

**-May 2024-**

It takes Emily through the rest of Emma’s first dance for her to process what Lindsey said.

Emma looks like Emily from the side. They’re identical, theoretically, though not so much in practice but enough that Emily can agree that from the side maybe they do look a lot alike. There are a lot of reasons to get emotional about a father-daughter dance, and it’s not exactly surprising that Lindsey would be emotional about it in general, but she was _sad_ because Emma and Emily look alike. The whole thing starts to take shape in Emily’s mind while she works on her third drink.

The idea of Emily in a wedding dress made Lindsey sad. She replays the thought over and over again while the vodka stokes the flame of stupidity somewhere deep, deep in her brain that’s always burning. She has a theory that feels too good to be true. If it is true, she’s about to find out. If it’s not true, it’s not like she could make things any worse for herself. Not to mention the open bar isn’t going anywhere.

She turns to look at Lindsey, whose eyelashes are still a little dewy, and holds out her hand.

“Come dance with me,” she says.

Lindsey looks at her hand, then into Emily’s face. Without saying a word, she places her hand in Emily’s, and Emily leads them onto the dance floor to join Emma and her husband, in full view of the rest of the wedding. Emily leads and Lindsey drapes an arm around Emily’s shoulders, her mouth set in a deliberately unreadable line.

“You look beautiful,” Emily says, “I didn’t say that before and I’m sorry, I should have.”

Lindsey blushes and looks away, over Emily’s shoulder. Emily shifts her grip on Lindsey’s hand.

“Thank you,” Lindsey murmurs.

Emily can feel the muscles in Lindsey’s upper back and shoulder moving under her hand and it reminds her of something. It reminds her of a lot of things, of specific moments in specific beds or not-beds, of Lindsey’s mouth on her own. The idea of Emily in a wedding dress makes Lindsey sad. The idea of Lindsey being sad makes Emily feel hopeful.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Emily says, “not just because--you know. I’m just glad you’re here.”

Lindsey finally looks at her again, and every second that they hold eye contact makes Emily’s heart beat faster. She can feel herself turning red but she doesn’t care. She wants Lindsey to see it.

“Me too,” Lindsey says, and Emily can’t help the grin that spreads across her face. The dance floor is getting crowded now as everyone starts to join them. Lindsey gets distracted by something over Emily’s shoulder and her hand moves to the back of Emily’s neck. Emily swallows, trying not to trip over her own feet.

“I’m gonna kiss you,” Lindsey says suddenly, and now Emily’s not so sure she can handle the mess she got herself into.

“Your grandma is staring at us,” Lindsey clarifies, “I always felt like she could see directly into my brain, I don’t want her to quiz you.”

“Do it,” Emily says. Lindsey’s hand tightens on the back of Emily’s neck and she pulls Emily up into a kiss. It’s like nothing had ever changed, like they’re back to four months ago when things felt like maybe they’d turn around. They absolutely should not be here, doing this. Emily should not be letting Lindsey kiss her and Lindsey should never have agreed to be her date if she still has the feelings that Emily thinks she does. And yet--they’re here. Lindsey is kissing her in the middle of the dance floor, and Emily is kissing her back.

When Emily pulls back and sees the look in Lindsey’s eyes, she knows with utter certainty what the rest of their night is going to look like.

It goes exactly like she expected. They leave the dance floor a little bit shy and a little bit excited. They both get another drink and drift apart for an hour, Emily doing her best to dance where she can and trying not to think about her knee too much; Lindsey watching and laughing and getting redder and drunker. Somewhere around the time the music starts to devolve into mid-2000s party songs, Emily works up the courage to go back to Lindsey where she’s perched at their table, twirling the thin straw in a drink that’s mostly ice by now.

“I’m over it,” Emily says, “I’m ready to go back to the room.”

“You’re over Darude’s Sandstorm?” Lindsey asks, quirking an eyebrow at Emily, twirling the straw again.

Emily’s eyes drop to Lindsey’s hand. She’s doing that shit on purpose. She wants Emily to be looking at her hands and thinking about what they can do. She’s seen Lindsey do this a thousand times and it always works.

“Yes,” Emily says, “it came out when I was five.”

“You’re going to miss all the T.I. songs,” Lindsey says.

“That’s for the best,” Emily replies, “Emma would be mortified if I got low.”

“Get Low is Lil Jon,” Lindsey says, putting her drink down, “who even are you?”

But when Emily holds out her hand again Lindsey takes it, and Emily can’t help the giddy smile that she hides by turning away and tugging Lindsey through the crowd to the exit.

Lindsey doesn’t let go of her hand. All the way across the courtyard in the humid Georgia air she holds Emily’s hand. Into the hotel across the street and all the way up to their floor in the elevator she holds Emily’s hand. They don’t say a word; Emily’s still just focused on breathing, on trying to remind herself that this is real, that this is really happening. It’s exactly the way she felt the first time they kissed, with Lindsey pressing her down into the grass. This is real. This is happening. Lindsey is holding her hand in an empty elevator and nothing that they do or say from here on out is for show.

When Lindsey lets go of Emily’s hand it’s when they’re alone in the room together, and Emily’s heart sinks until she sees the look on Lindsey’s face.

She’s _nervous_.

“Why did it make you sad that Emma looks like me?” Emily asks. It’s an imperfect phrasing, but Lindsey understands the question. She bites her lips, and Emily can see it when lindsey gives up. 

“Because it makes me sad to imagine you in a wedding dress,” Lindsey says, “because I wanted to marry you.”

Lindsey is the one to reach for Emily’s hand this time. Emily flips Lindsey’s hand over and looks down at Lindsey’s palm. She places Lindsey’s hand on the center of her chest so that Lindsey can feel the way her heart is hammering in her chest, because she’s run out of words. Lindsey’s eyes flick down to her hand, then back up to Emily’s face.

“Why are you here?” Emily says, “I know it’s not just because I asked, what do you want?”

Lindsey’s eyes fall to her hand again. She strokes her thumb along Emily’s chest and Emily sucks in a breath.

“I want you,” Lindsey says hoarsely, “I never stopped. Wanting you.”

This time it’s Emily who initiates the kiss. Lindsey responds eagerly, wrapping both arms around Emily’s waist, and Emily takes the opportunity to do something she’s wanted to do all night--she runs her hands over Lindsey’s shoulders and arms, dragging her fingernails gently over Lindsey’s skin, taking in the muscle that Lindsey’s built over the last two months. 

When Lindsey topples Emily back onto the bed, all of Emily’s self-consciousness rushes back. Lindsey’s looking her over, taking her in while Emily kicks her shoes off, and it’s so obvious to Emily all over again how in-shape Lindsey is and how out of shape _she_ is.

Her scars are so, so visible like this. 

She sits up on the edge of the bed and Lindsey stands between her legs, reaching down to push the flyaway hairs out of Emily’s face. Emily cranes her neck upwards to look into Lindsey’s face, palming Lindsey’s hips through the thin fabric of her dress, and Lindsey bends down sharply to kiss her. Emily chases the kiss when Lindsey pulls away, and she waits for a rush of embarrassment that never comes. She used to hate feeling and looking desperate in front of Lindsey, especially after her second injury. Now she doesn’t care if Lindsey knows exactly how desperate she is. She’s not afraid of anything anymore. The worst thing that Lindsey could do is leave her--and Emily’s already lived through that once.

Lindsey doesn’t leave. Instead she cups Emily’s face in her hand and brushes her thumb across Emliy’s lower lip. Emily blinks hazily up at Lindsey, taking in the way her collarbones and cheekbones and jaw are highlighted by the light coming under the door to their room. After a moment, Lindsey sinks to her knees and kisses Emily again. This time they get carried away, enough that Emily isn’t the least bit surprised when Lindsey pushes her dress up her thighs. She is surprised when Lindsey breaks the kiss and leans back, though.

In the half-light, Lindsey reaches out for the scars on Emily’s knee. Emily stiffens but doesn’t stop her, and when Lindsey gives her a questioning look she nods and swallows the lump in her throat. It feels important to let Lindsey do this, whatever it is.

Lindsey traces the scars with her fingertip, resting her other hand under Emily’s dress, high on her upper thigh. Emily rests her hands on Lindsey’s shoulders and forces herself to breathe. With each second it gets easier, until Lindsey leans over to brush her lips across Emily’s knee and Emily realizes that she’s about to cry.

“Get up here,” she croaks, tugging at Lindsey’s shoulders. 

Lindsey presses Emily into the mattress. Emily tangles her hands in Lindsey’s hair and lets herself forget everything else.


	6. there's something in you i believe in

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emily puts the pieces back together with a little help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My God, guys.
> 
> Thank you for being on this ride with me. I am...very glad that it's over, this turned into a monster, but I always knew it would be this long and this intense. I hope that it gives you what you wanted.
> 
> <3

[we got room to grow  
and i’ll take you in no matter what your chaos brings  
there’s something in you i believe in]

**-May 2024-**

Emily trails her fingertips from the base of Lindsey’s spine to the base of Lindsey’s neck. Lindsey rests her head on her hands, watching Emily touch her, and Emily does everything in her power to avoid eye contact. She thinks it’ll save her from having to talk, but she should know better by now. They’re both too sober to be able to pretend like having sex fixed everything.

But maybe having sex _again_ will fix everything.

“Em,” Lindsey says. It doesn’t mean ‘stop,’ but Emily takes her hand back and sits up, suddenly feeling as though she should be covered up again. Lindsey can see so much like this.

“Bet there’s alcohol in the mini bar,” Emily says, “Emma owes me, since we were supposed to have a king suite. You wanna get more drunk? Uh, re-drunk?”

“No,” Lindsey says, “we really shouldn’t--”

“And we shouldn’t have had sex,” Emily says, sliding to her feet and pulling a hoodie over her head, “but we could do that again too.”

“We should talk,” Lindsey says, and Emily can feel her heart beating wildly in her chest and recognizes on some distant level that she’s panicking.

“God,” Emily says, “you’re so responsible and boring now, what happened to you?”

“You happened to me,” Lindsey snaps, and Emily falls quiet, her hand stilling on the door of the mini bar.

She sits on the edge of the bed, facing away from Lindsey. She should cry, but for some reason this time the tears won’t come. It reminds her of the day that Lindsey dumped her, the hopelessness she felt. There’s no _point_ in crying. Crying will just make Lindsey feel guilty, and Emily’s done enough of that tonight and in their lifetime.

“I’m sorry,” Emily says, “I shouldn’t have asked you to come out here. And I knew that, and I did it anyway.”

“Stop it,” Lindsey says, “I agreed to do it. I wanted to do it. That’s not what I meant. I just meant, since you got hurt, I--I’ve had to be the bad guy, I’ve had to be the wet blanket, the responsible adult and like...carry everything.”

It’s a weird, long moment. 

Emily thinks about the brief freedom she felt after she was told she needed to retire. She thinks about how she stopped caring about rehabbing because she knew that rehabbing wouldn’t bring her career back. She thinks about how much time she spent avoiding the gym, avoiding soccer fields, avoiding so much of what the two of them used to enjoy together. She thinks about how Lindsey used to encourage her, how Lindsey’s gentle and patient encouragement had irritated her, how she had brushed Lindsey off and closed herself away over and over until they got here.

She thinks about how she’s only wearing a hoodie and Lindsey’s wearing nothing.

“You deserve better,” Emily says in agreement. 

“That’s not what I said,” Lindsey says, sitting up. She reaches across her chest for Emily, and Emily turns her head just in time to really get an eyeful of Lindsey, tan and toned and still in love with her, before she rockets off of the bed and to her feet.

“No,” Emily said, “but it’s true. You deserve--”

“I don’t give a shit what I deserve,” Lindsey says, sitting up a bit, crossing her arms in front of her chest, “I want _you_. I want you to be better, because I want to be with you, I don’t want anyone else.”

“What if I can’t be better?” Emily blurts, and she can tell that she’s crying, and she hates herself for crying, hates herself for ruining everything, again and again.

“Come here,” Lindsey says, her voice soft and patient, and Emily clambers back onto the bed and back into Lindsey’s arms without thinking. She curls up, pressing her face into Lindsey’s neck, and Lindsey wraps her arms around Emily’s body and pulls the sheet on top of them.

“You don’t have to do this alone,” Lindsey says.

Emily closes her eyes. She wants to say that she knows, because she’s heard it before, but actually, she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know what it means, not really. She doesn’t know what anyone could even do to help her.

“We all wanted to help,” Lindsey says, reaching up to smooth her hand through Emily’s hair, “not just me. But especially me. I wanted to help you so bad, Em. But you wouldn’t let me.”

“I don’t know how,” Emily mumbles. It’s so embarrassing to admit that it sends a white-hot wave of shame through her body, but she still says it, and she knows that’s progress, even if Lindsey doesn’t say it.

“I think that’s something worth figuring out,” Lindsey says.

“I want to be good for you,” Emily says, and she falls apart right after, makes the worst noise she can ever remember making, sobbing into Lindsey’s chest, Lindsey holds her tighter, pressing a kiss to Emily’s forehead, and lets Emily cry.

Emily cries until she can’t anymore. By the time she stops her throat is raw and Lindsey has started rubbing between her shoulderblades. All the tears she couldn’t get to come when Lindsey dumped her, and all the times she turned away and inward instead of letting Lindsey see her hurt, all of it comes out at once, and she’s exhausted when she stops, when she can breathe again. 

“I love you,” Lindsey says, “I want to be with you, I want to do this, but you have to get help. You have to let someone help. It doesn’t have to be me. Maybe it shouldn’t be me, I don’t know.”

“You have to focus on the Olympics,” Emily says, realizing it out loud. Her window is closing. Maybe it’s already closed. Maybe it never really re-opened and she’s still standing outside, looking in.

“I’m not going to see anyone,” Lindsey says, instead. “I’m not now and I’m not going to. And when I get back from the Olympics, maybe--maybe we can try again. If you’re ready and you want to.”

“You don’t have to wait for me to get my shit together,” Emily says, thinking of Rose. Real Adult Rose, with her life all squared away, who will be matching Lindsey step for step in the Olympics. 

“You’d do it for me,” Lindsey says, propping herself up on her elbow, resting her cheek in her hand. Emily doesn’t hide her swollen eyes from Lindsey. She doesn’t hide anything, just wipes her snotty nose on her hoodie and takes a deep, shuddery breath.

“Yeah, well,” she says, “you’d be worth it.”

Lindsey raises an eyebrow at her, reaching out to tug at one of the strings of Emily’s hoodie.

“You don’t know if I’m worth it,” Emily says.

“Shut up,” Lindsey says.

“I’m afraid that I won’t be worth it,” Emily rephrases, and Lindsey’s expression softens. She touches Emily’s chin with her thumb, then takes her hand back.

“I’d bet it all on you,” Lindsey says.

It’s all Emily needs to hear to know that she’s going to try.

**-January 2020-**

Lindsey FaceTimes her on New Years Eve.

It’s after midnight, and Emily’s a little sauced. Not _drunk_, but maybe close. Lindsey is properly drunk, in the early stages where her eyes are still bright and her cheeks are pink, before the point where she gets sad and needy. Emily’s been drunk with her enough to know the stages, and she catches herself hoping that Lindsey’s with people who will take good care of her when she reaches the sad drunk stage.

Then she hears a voice in the background and she doesn’t have to wonder.

“Dasani,” Lindsey says, drawing out Emily’s nickname, “babe, I miss you, wow, it’s 2020.”

“It’s 2020,” Emily agrees. She’s not sure what else to say. She’s still stuck on Lindsey calling her ‘babe’. It’s not new, it’s not like she’s never heard it before, but since the World Cup she’s been noticing how the way they talk to each other maybe isn’t entirely normal.

Or maybe she just wants it to be something else.

“Did you have a New Years kiss?” Lindsey asks, “I hope you got one.”

Emily winces, readjusting her phone in her other hand. Somewhere behind her, Emma is trying to wrangle everyone into a game of poker.

“Nah,” Emily says, “I’m with family mostly.”

“You deserve a New Year’s Kiss,” Lindsey says.

“Thanks,” Emily says, “hey, I gotta--”

Lindsey’s boyfriend appears behind her. He’s also drunk; he makes brief eye contact with the camera and wraps his arms around Lindsey’s waist from behind her, moving her hair so he can kiss her neck. It’s startlingly intimate and Emily sees it for exactly what it is: he’s claiming her. It makes Emily’s skin crawl.

“I gotta go,” Emily says, “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Today,” Lindsey says, ignoring her boyfriend, “love you.”

“Love you,” Emily mumbles, and hangs up. 

**-May 2024-**

She wakes up curled up against Lindsey’s back, with her arm draped over Lindsey’s side and Lindsey’s fingers threaded between her own. They’re both naked, because Lindsey had peeled the sweatshirt off of Emily and kissed her all over for another half hour before they fell asleep like this, and it feels like a dream. 

The hangover, though, does not feel like a dream. 

“Fuck,” Emily mumbles, rolling onto her back. 

“We sure did,” Lindsey mumbles, and Emily can’t help but smile even though her head is pounding. 

“We could go again,” Emily says, and Lindsey rolls over, too. She’s too quiet though, and Emily feels distinctly sick. 

“I don’t want you to think I don’t want to,” Lindsey says. She reaches over to trail her fingertips along Emily’s neck to her shoulder. Emily fights the urge to turn into the contact. What Lindsey’s saying doesn’t match the way Lindsey is touching her, and it makes her nervous. 

“But you don’t,” Emily says. “I need some Advil or something.”

“I do,” Lindsey says, and her voice is so earnest that Emily believes her, “Em, more than anything, but I want you to feel better first and I don’t want you to have to worry about me—about us—while you’re worried about you.”

Emily takes a deep breath. She can still taste the vodka if she focuses hard enough. She knows that Lindsey’s right, and she’s bracing herself for what should feel like rocketing over the edge of an emotional cliff, but it doesn’t come. She’s not devastated like she expected to be. She’s okay. 

“I’ll always be worried about you,” she admits. Her voice is shaky, but Lindsey’s already seen her at her worst. If she cries naked and hungover in a hotel bed, then she cries naked and hungover in a hotel bed. 

“You don’t need to worry about me,” Lindsey says. She brushes her knuckles across Emily’s cheek and Emily tries her hardest not to cry. 

“I’ll be here, Lindsey continues, “you don’t need to worry about me.”

Lindsey is there. She’s there when Emily gets out of the shower. She’s there at brunch, with her arm on the back of Emily’s chair, and Emily lets herself lean into it. She’s there in the car on the way to the airport with a bottle of Advil and a Gatorade, nursing Emily’s headache away. She’s there on the plane, in the window seat even though her legs are a little too long, and this time Emily takes the aisle seat and doesn’t complain. 

Lindsey falls asleep on the plane and Emily scoots to the edge of her own seat so that Lindsey can rest her cheek against Emily’s shoulder. She doesn’t feel claustrophobic with the weight of Lindsey resting against her and she knows that months ago she would have. It used to feel like Lindsey being there, wanting her, wanting to help her was a physical _weight_, an expectation, an obligation. It still feels like nothing she can do will be enough to earn this patience and love, but she doesn’t feel like she needs to hide from it anymore. So her obstacles feel insurmountable. So she feels like she’ll never, ever be worthy of standing next to Lindsey again. So what? 

It could be worse. It _has been_ worse. And if she’s being honest, feeling inadequate didn’t come from her injuries. She knows and is willing to admit that she’s always felt inadequate next to Lindsey, starting from their first season with the Thorns, bleeding into all 8 minutes of her 2019 World Cup. And Lindsey loved her then, too. 

Lindsey starts to wake up right when they start to descend, as the plane starts to jostle while they dip into the clouds covering Portland. When she first moved there Emily felt a little caged in by those clouds, the way they felt like a permanent fixture for months at a time, but now it’s comforting. Lindsey makes a soft noise of protest and presses her face into Emily’s neck, and Emily’s body responds immediately with a craving so strong she has to close her eyes. She wants to hold onto this moment, the intimacy she knows she’s going to miss more than anything else. She reaches up and trails her fingers through Lindsey’s hair where it’s come loose from her ponytail, and feels Lindsey smile. 

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“Shh,” Lindsey replies, reaching to place her hand on Emily’s thigh. 

“No, it’s important,” Emily says, “I’m sorry I pushed you away when all you wanted was to help. And I’m sorry if I made you feel like I didn’t want you there or like I wasn’t proud of you. I’m going to do better.”

She’s surprised at how easy it is to say. She keeps waiting for the words to become a lump in her throat, but it never happens. 

“You are,” Lindsey says, pressing her lips to Emily’s shoulder, over her sweatshirt. 

“I am?” Emily asks, distracted by the feeling of Lindsey’s fingers against her thigh.

“You are doing better,” Lindsey murmurs, “already.”

**-March 2020-**

“They’ve been broken up for a month,” Rose says, “and it’s like the fifth time they’ve broken up, I think it’s fine for you to make a move.”

“I don’t want to rush anything,” Emily says. She tosses a gummy bear into the air and sidesteps until she can catch it in her open mouth. Rose takes a gummy bear out of her own bag and nails Emily directly between the eyes with it.

“Hey!” Emily protests.

“Let me rephrase that,” Rose says, “you have been in love with her for actual _literal_ years and if you don’t make a move this time, I will kill you.”

Emily doesn’t answer. She throws a gummy bear at Rose, who lifts up her hand and catches it.

“Holy shit,” Emily says, “you should have been a goalie.”

“What are you scared of?” Rose says, “she basically confessed that she was into you on New Years.”

“No she didn’t,” Emily says, ignoring the way her face goes hot, “I don’t know. Why would she even be into me?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Rose says.

“No promises,” Emily says, and Rose rolls her eyes, but she drops it.

**-May 2024-**

At the airport, they linger. 

Emily doesn’t want to leave without Lindsey. She doesn’t want to get in her car and go back to her apartment and wake up tomorrow morning alone. She knows she needs to, and she knows that Lindsey knows, but she stands and plays with her keys and Lindsey shifts her bag to her other shoulder and bites her lips. 

“I’ll be around if you need me,” Lindsey says, “for a little longer, until the Olympics. I’m here.”

Emily feels the last sentence deep in her gut. 

“Can I kiss you?” she blurts, and feels herself blush furiously as soon as it’s out of her mouth. 

Lindsey doesn’t answer verbally. She smiles, eyes crinkling, and Emily remembers how much she missed Lindsey’s dimples. Lindsey is the one to close the space between them, leaning in and brushing her lips over Emily’s like it’s easy, like they never stopped. 

It’s over way too quickly, and Emily replays it over and over in her head on the way home, while she does her laundry and orders some takeout. She misses Lindsey that night, but it feels different now. It doesn’t feel like there’s a hole right through the middle of her chest. Instead this kind of missing-Lindsey motivates her. She wakes up and when she reaches for Lindsey and nobody’s there, she rolls to her feet and lets the warmth of her shower seep into her skin. She cleans her apartment. She spends her last day off before she has to go back to work unpacking the rest of her stuff. She goes to the grocery store and cooks herself dinner.

She doesn’t text Lindsey. She doesn’t want to text Lindsey again until it stops feeling like she _needs_ to, like she’ll lose it if she doesn’t have Lindsey to lean on. She won’t lose it. She knows it. She needs to believe it.

She also needs to apologize to more than just Lindsey.

Rose picks up on the fourth ring, right when Emily was starting to think she’d get sent to voicemail. Emily has known Rose long enough to know that’s on purpose, and she respects it. She knows she deserves it.

“Oh, hey,” Rose says, “long time no talk.”

“Rosie,” Emily says, “I’m sorry.”

“I spoke to Lindsey,” Rose says, “it seems like stuff went okay. She didn’t sound upset.”

“I’m apologizing to _you_,” Emily says, and Rose falls quiet. Emily can count the number of times she’s heard that on one hand.

“Go ahead,” Rose says eventually, and Emily has to smile.

“I’m sorry,” Emily repeats, “I pushed you away when I got hurt and that was wrong. I didn’t know how to let you help me. I still--I still don’t really know how. But I know that I need to let people who love me help me. And I’m gonna figure it out. And it’s not just about Lindsey, I don’t want you to think that it is.”

“It’s okay if it is,” Rose says, “it was always different with you guys, even before.”

“No,” Emily insists, “I mean, it was, but it’s not just about me and her. It’s about you and me too, that’s a whole separate thing. You’re one of my best friends. And I treated you like shit, and I’m sorry.”

“Okay,” Rose says quietly, and then, “thank you.”

Emily’s not sure what else to say. She sits in silence with Rose on the phone for a little while and lets Rose speak first this time. She does, eventually, but this time Emily’s not squirming. She’s not afraid of what Rose is going to say next.

“Lindsey and I were never,” Rose says, then trails off. “We didn’t, you know. I’d never do that to you. She wouldn’t either.”

“I know,” Emily says, “I never thought you did.”

She only thought they _should_. But she doesn’t have to say that, and anyway, that’s about Emily, not about Rose.

“I’m seeing someone actually,” Rose says.

“Oh,” Emily says, “dude, that’s great.”

“It’s new-ish,” Rose says, “and we’re kind of waiting ‘til after the Olympics to make it official, or whatever. God, that feels so stupid to say, we’re too old for that.”

“Are we?” Emily asks. She’s a little alarmed by the prospect. She doesn’t feel _that_ old. 

“I don’t know,” Rose says, “are you and Lindsey official again?”

The question makes Emily’s stomach twist, but not in an unpleasant way. She thinks about the way Lindsey had fallen asleep on her during the flight back to Portland and tries to conjure up the feeling of Lindsey’s hand on her thigh. 

“I haven’t seen her since we got back,” Emily says. 

“Really?” Rose asks, “I thought—when I spoke with her it sounded like it went well.”

“It did,” Emily says, “I just have shit to figure out and I don’t want to make her deal with it, she’s dealt with enough.”

“I mean,” Rose says, “that’s fair. But that doesn’t mean you need to disappear again.”

It’s the word ‘again’ that snaps Emily out of it. She might have different--and better--reasons not to be texting Lindsey, but it’s not like the end result is any different. And she was just sort of assuming that Lindsey understood her silence, but she really ought to know better than that.

“You’re right,” she realizes out loud, and Rose laughs.

“Say it again,” she says, “slower, so I can record it.”

“Fuck off,” Emily laughs.

**-April 2016-**

The game is tied. Emily doesn’t feel particularly bad about that. She’s played well, she thinks--she’s even gotten a little individual attention after she blocked a shot from an Orlando player that left her stinging, and she knows she’ll have a bruise tomorrow. She’s proud of that, though. Proud of the impact she’s been able to make, even if she misses Charlottesville. She’s a fucking _professional soccer player_. In _Portland_. And she feels good, even if the game is tied.

She can tell that Lindsey does not feel good about the game being tied. Nobody is working more diligently, running faster, fighting harder than Lindsey Horan is right now. Emily’s almost annoyed by it for a moment because it forces the rest of them to ratchet up the pace, and she’s a little tired and some part of her feels like it might be okay for us to sit back just for a second and re-collect themselves before pushing again. Lindsey doesn’t ever seem to need a second to take a breath. She’s a real professional, not like Emily, not like the college kids on both sides of the field. She’s definitely never had to manage her energy the way Emily has, never had to play a game right after taking an exam or the morning after a party she shouldn’t have gone to. 

Emily is annoyed only until it pays off, until she can see that Lindsey was right. They keep pushing, until Emily’s throat is raw from yelling and breathing hard, and then the ball is crossed to Tobin, who collects it like it’s nothing and pops it over to Lindsey, who is somehow right there in the box without a body on her and puts the ball in the net without even hesitating.

It’s her first goal and Emily knows immediately that she’s going to score many, many, many more. When she leaps into the hug pile, having sprinted from the midfield to make it there, it finally hits her how lucky she is. To be here, doing this, with people like Tobin fucking Heath and Christine fucking Sinclair and _Lindsey fucking Horan_, the future of US Soccer. 

She wouldn’t trade it for the world.

**-May 2024-**

Emily texts Lindsey that night. From then on it’s a little easier to breathe. They don’t talk constantly, but just having Lindsey’s name in her messages again makes things feel a little bit easier, a little bit more _right_. Little by little, Emily starts pulling her life back together, reaching out to other former teammates, getting to work a little early, working her way up to jogging a mile every other day.

She runs two miles the day that the US Women’s National team plays its first send-off game. They beat Ireland and Emily watches Lindsey assist Rose’s goal with her legs tucked up under her on the couch, and she pumps her fists in the air as if she’s on the bench instead of on the West coast. It doesn’t feel great to be alone, but it doesn’t feel bad the way it used to, either. 

**Dasani**: sick goal rosieeeeee  
**Dasani**: i’d say a nice assist from linds but we both know she was trying to score  
**Dasani**: jk don’t tell her i said that she just started liking me again  
**Rosie**: stfu  
**Rosie**: thx tho (:  
**Rosie**: you should text her. I don’t think she knows you watched

It had never occurred to Emily that Lindsey might think at all about whether Emily was watching their games. She realizes, suddenly, that Lindsey not only thinks about it--she probably even hopes that Emily was watching, and it makes Emily’s stomach fill with butterflies. That night she calls Lindsey for the first time since the wedding and they talk about the game for an hour before Lindsey hangs up to make her go to bed.

At the end of May she gets a therapist. She cries in their first session. She cries a lot. At first she tries to hold it in, because she doesn’t actually know this woman, but it hurts too much and by the time she leaves she’s so dehydrated that she stops at McDonalds just for a pair of water bottles to crush before she gets home. She doesn’t tell anyone, and for the first time since she started to put the pieces back together, she doesn’t feel like she needs to.

In the first week of June, Ellie texts her first.

**Ellie**: hi darlin  
**Ellie**: saw an ad for this today, is this one of yours?

It’s a picture of the ad for the Pilots Elite I.D. showcase. The culmination of the first session of their most strenuous camp--the thing that she’s been devoting most of her nine-to-five to for the past two weeks--but not something she would have thought was on Ellie’s radar at all. She’s mostly been observing, letting her own team coach the kids, but planning the drills and guiding the high-school aged kids through drills that _she_ did at national team camps is exhausting.

**Em**: yeah, my kids have been coaching  
**Em**: and i’ve been supervising. Kinda scary right? People pay me for it!

She expects Ellie to laugh. It is a joke, after all.

**Ellie**: can we come watch?

Emily doesn’t ask who ‘we’ is. She doesn’t want to get her hopes up when she says yes, doesn’t want to think about what she’ll do if Lindsey isn’t there, and really doesn’t want to think about what she’ll do if Lindsey _is_. She’s almost forgotten about it by the time the showcase rolls around, until she gets to the field and glances at the stands starting to fill up and remembers with a jolt that shoots straight down her spine. There are parents and friends and college scouts in the crowd. Somewhere, too, are some of her friends, there for her, even though she’s mostly going to stand on the sideline and shout.

She doesn’t look again until the game starts, and when she does spare a glance towards the stands while the refs set the teams up for a free kick, she catches a glimpse of herself. Ellie has a sign with her name on it, purple and black and white glitter, and Caitlin is sitting next to her with a giant Fathead of Emily’s face. 

“Oh my God,” one of her kids says, “you have to get a picture with those.”

“Coach your team,” Emily says, but she can’t wipe the smile off her face. 

Lindsey is there. she seems too large for life, certainly too large for the dinky bleachers, resting her feet on the empty seats a step down in a way that draws a lot of attention to her legs in those leggings. Her hair is down, over one shoulder, and she’s smiling, holding her phone in one hand, pointing to something on the other end of the field with her other. Emily’s heart rate picks up before she looks away and forces herself to focus, and she knows she’s going to be thinking about it for the rest of the game.

She only checks over her shoulder one more time, at halftime. Lindsey’s gaze is on her, and when they lock eyes she smiles, but it’s a soft, private smile meant just for Emily. 

After the game she rushes through the motions of getting everyone ready to go, hoping they won’t leave. Still, by the time sh leaves the locker room the stands are empty and it seems like everyone’s gone. She tries not to let it bother her, fishing her phone out of her pocket to see if anyone had texted her, but there’s nothing. She’s given up, halfway to the parking lot, when she rounds a corner and sees her friends waiting in a huddle, leaning over to look at something on Caitlin’s phone.

Lindsey’s the one to notice her first. She looks up and catches Emily’s eyes and grins, and it starts in her eyes and ends with her dimples and Emily’s stopped walking because her knees are a little weak.

“What’s up coach!” Cait exclaims, and Emily forces herself to go to them but only makes it halfway before the Aussies are upon her, hugging her from either side and jumping up and down. Lindsey still has the signs, one in each hand, but she doesn’t say anything. She’s still just smiling.

The only time her smile drops is after the Aussies leave them alone together, headed to Ellie’s car with their heads leaned together while they talk. Emily watches them go feeling vaguely disquieted because she _knows_ they have to be talking about her and Lindsey, but something in her has shifted, something big, just from being around them again. She’d never admit it out loud, but there was a part of her that thought, even after Ellie texted her, that her friends would never see her the same way again. Now it’s clear to her how little has changed, and she mostly feels relief, even if being alone with Lindsey makes her nervous.

“Hey,” Lindsey says, as if they haven’t been speaking for ten minutes.

“Hi,” Emily says, shifting her weight from foot to foot. She feels fifteen again, but not in her knees.

“Do you want these?” Lindsey asks, holding the signs out in one hand.

“You can keep my face,” Emily says, “I don’t want that in my house, I see enough of it already.”

“It’s a nice face,” Lindsey offers, and Emily can’t believe she’s blushing, but she is.

“Thank you for coming,” Emily says, taking the other sign, “even though it wasn’t like...you know. It’s not like it was my kids playing or anything.”

“I’ll come in the fall,” Lindsey says, “every game I can. I like watching you coach.”

“You like watching me chomp on my gum and yell at kids?” Emily asks, and Lindsey laughs and takes a step closer. Emily’s instinct is to pull away, to take a step back and avoid eye contact, but this time she resists that impulse. She lifts her head and looks into Lindsey’s eyes, and for the first time in months, maybe longer, she lets herself feel like she deserves the love she can see in Lindsey’s face.

Even if they’re not, as Rose would call it, ‘official.’

“Can I kiss you?” Emily blurts, and Lindsey’s smile softens around the eyes. She reaches for Emily’s free hand with her own free hand and leans in to press a lingering kiss to Emily’s cheek. It should feel like a rejection, because Lindsey didn’t say a word or kiss Emily on the mouth, but it _doesn’t_ feel like a rejection. It feels like exactly what Emily wanted, even if it’s not what she thought she did. It feels like coming home, just for a moment.

“We have another game at the end of the month,” Lindsey says.

“And one more in July before you leave,” Emily finishes, “I know, I have them all on my calendar.”

Lindsey threads their fingers together and rests her forehead against Emily’s.

“I want to see you before then,” Lindsey says, “before I have to go.”

“We can make that happen,” Emily says.

**-June 2011-**

They’re scrimmaging for the last time before camp ends, and Emily feels good about her chances of making the U-18 team. She knows it’s her last chance to do it and she knows that should make her feel some kind of pressure, but she feels good. And why not? She’s good. Sure, everyone else here is good, too, but she’s not intimidated.

Not by most of them.

Lindsey Horan is a different story. Emily’s ninety percent sure the girl doesn’t even know her name. Her roommate Jaelene _hates_ Lindsey and bitches about her all the time, and Emily doesn’t like Jaelene, which makes her want to like Lindsey instinctively, but she has to admit Jaelene might have a point. Lindsey barely talks to anyone but Cari and Emily has never seen her so much as smile. She doesn’t really look like she’s enjoying herself, which is absurd because she’s definitely the best player here and she doesn’t need to be such a tryhard.

And yet...Emily wants Lindsey to notice her. Maybe because Lindsey doesn’t notice anyone, and Emily loves a challenge. She spends the entire scrimmage serving Lindsey perfect balls in on a platter that Lindsey scores on twice. Lindsey gives her a low-five both times, but she never makes eye contact and she’s always jogging back to get reset and start over, like a machine.

Somehow they end up walking back into the locker rooms side by side. Emily takes the opportunity to bump Lindsey’s shoulder with her own, and Lindsey gives her a look like she thinks Emily ran into her or something, her brows furrowed. She’s tall. Emily realizes fully, for the first time, that Lindsey could kick her ass if she wanted to. RIght now she looks like she might.

“Good game,” Emily croaks, “bet you make the roster.”

“Thanks,” Lindsey says after a second. And then, “I’m sure you will, too.”

That’s the moment that Emily remembers for months after she’s cut. She didn’t make the team, but Lindsey Horan thought she would.

**-July 2020-**

Emily doesn’t get to see Lindsey again until the night before Lindsey leaves. She’s been so busy recruiting, and Lindsey’s been back and forth with the national team, that they just haven’t found a time to actually meet up.

That night, Lindsey comes to her new apartment for the first time. Emily has ordered pizza, and Lindsey groans when she sees it.

“I shouldn’t,” Lindsey says, but it’s their favorite place, their favorite order, and Emily knows her better than that.

“What are they gonna do, cut you?” Emily asks, and Lindsey shakes her head, but she’s smiling.

They eat their pizza at Emily’s counter on bar stools because Emily hasn’t bothered to get a dining room table. It’s the first time anyone’s been over to her apartment, and Emily’s a little nervous about it.

“This place is cute,” Lindsey says, addressing the elephant in the room.

Emily wants to say she hopes it’s not a permanent place.

“Yeah,” Emily agrees, swallowing the rest of her sentence with a glass of water.

“Is it a yearly lease?” Lindsey asks, and Emily focuses very hard on her slice of pizza.

“I took over the second half of someone else’s lease,” she says, “a grad student that got an internship or something. So it’s only six months. I have like, a week left before I have to say if I want to renew or not. But it’s cute and it’s convenient to UP so I probably will.”

She’s been putting it off for obvious reasons. Lindsey lets it go and they talk about other things, mindless things that aren’t their breakup or their relationship or the Olympics, and when they’re done eating Lindsey flops onto Emily’s futon like she belongs there and Emily’s heart gets lodged in her throat for a few seconds before she kicks herself into gear and puts something on Netflix.

“Netflix and chill?” Lindsey teases her, and Emily turns red.

“I’m less presumptuous than that,” Emily says, but maybe she’s not, now that Lindsey has suggested it. Maybe she spends the whole episode of this stupid baking show paying no attention to anything other than how close Lindsey is to her and remembering the night of Emma’s wedding in vivid detail.

As the episode ends, Lindsey drops her hand to Emily’s knee. Emily turns her head and finds Lindsey is already looking at her. She can feel the heat rising into the collar of her sweatshirt, but she has no idea what to do or what to say.

“I’m really proud of you,” Lindsey says. “You look great, you--you look...you seem happier.”

“I am,” Emily says honestly. She’s grappling with a way to express that she still wants and needs Lindsey when Lindsey opens her mouth again as if to speak, and then closes it, running her thumb along Emily’s kneecap. It’s the side where she was injured, and she wonders if Lindsey’s thinking about it or if the movement is instinctive.

“I’ve been working on it,” Emily says, “trying to be better. Trying to, like...deserve you.”

Her voice cracks at the end and she kicks herself mentally, but Lindsey reacts immediately, lifting her hand to Emily’s face.

“Em,” Lindsey says, “you never stopped deserving me, that’s not what that was.”

“Okay,” Emily says, mostly because she needs Lindsey to be quiet before she _does_ cry.

“Seriously,” Lindsey says, “I need you to really understand that because I’m--I love you. Alright? Every version of you. And I want you to come home. I don’t want you to renew your lease. I don’t want to come home from the Olympics to an apartment that doesn’t have you in it.”

Emily is definitely crying. She wants to hide it but she doesn’t, just turns her face into Lindsey’s hand and lets Lindsey pull her into a hug.

They don’t do anything else that night. Lindsey kisses her cheek again before she goes home, and Emily sleeps her deepest, most restful sleep since she re-tore her ACL, and when she wakes up Lindsey is on a plane to the Olympics with one of Emily’s sweatshirts, as evidenced by the Snapchat that Emily wakes up to, that she shamelessly screenshots and makes her iPhone background.

They roll through the first game in France easily with a 3-0 win. Lindsey scores off of a Rose assist and Emily leaps off of her couch and pumps both fists and doesn’t feel even the barest ghost of the jealousy she used to feel when Rose leaps into Lindsey’s arms. Instead she feels like she’s there with them in the celebration pile, and if she closes her eyes and turns the TV up loud enough she can imagine that she’s really there. She wants, more than anything else in the world, to be there. Even if she had to sit on the bench again, even if she played three minutes or no minutes, to be wearing that jersey and playing with her friends again--it’s all she wants.

But the sadness feels further away now. It’s bittersweet. She misses them and she does cry, the night before their second game. She cries for the career she could have had and all of the things she wanted to accomplish on the field for club and country that she never will. She cries because her bed is too empty and she feels like she wasted months of time with and without Lindsey, treating her badly, or not treating her well enough. She cries for a lot of reasons. But when she stops, when she washes her face, she can look at her reflection and feel something good.

Not pride, not exactly, not yet. But a fondness maybe, for the person she _is_. The urge to give herself a hug, if she could. Instead she makes some tea and before she sleeps she goes over some recruiting paperwork to remind herself that it’s not like her life is over, just that her life is different. And even though it feels a little stupid, it does help.

They win the second game 2-1. It feels a little closer but Emily never doubts for a second that they’ll pull through; she can see it in their body language that they’ll do anything to win and she knows the feeling. Lindsey subs out after 60 minutes and looks exhausted and older than Emily remembers. After the game Emily texts her for an hour, pulling her blankets up over her head so there’s nothing but her and the words on her screen coming right from Lindsey. Lindsey, who feels old and frustrated, who wants to set an example. 

In the third game she does. She scores twice. They’re the only two goals because AD is playing like a woman possessed. Hailie blocks a shot with her face and has to sub off with her nose gushing but she’s laughing the whole way to the bench, and Emily feels like she’s looking at a version of herself and it makes her laugh, too. When Sam gets subbed off she hands the armband to Lindsey, and when she puts it on Emily cries like a baby for the last ten minutes of the game.

And just like that they’re through to the knockout round.

They have a few days off in between. Lindsey sounds better, and Emily tries to give her the space to focus because she knows she’d need it if it were her. That’s why she’s surprised when Rose calls her after a full day has passed. 

“Is everything okay?” Emily asks, feeling the panic rising in her chest.

“Yeah,” Rose says, “everything’s fine, promise. Everyone’s good. Well, Hailie’s nose is super broken, but she’s gonna play with a mask. Remember when Sam did that for a while and we made fun of her for literally years?”

“Yes,” Emily says, and then in a Bane voice, “nobody cared who I was until I put on the mask.”

“Yeah,” Rose says, “so anyway, if I book you a flight for tomorrow will you come?”

Emily blinks. Her mouth is dry and her heart is hammering. It reminds her of what it used to be like to get the call that she had made a roster. As if in sympathy, her knee aches.

“Um,” she says, “to France?”

“To France,” Rose confirms, “for the knockout rounds, if you think your boss would be cool with it.”

“I can work from France,” Emily says, “I’m mostly doing paperwork and sending emails, but I don’t know where I’d stay or how I’d get into games or anything.”

“I can handle it,” Rose says, “I just didn’t want to do it unless I knew you wanted to come and could swing it.”

“Why?” Emily asks.

“Because if I bought the ticket and you couldn’t come I’d be mad,” Rose says.

“No,” Emily clarifies, “why--why are you flying _me_ to _France_?”

Rose is quiet for a second. When she speaks again her voice is different, softer and more serious, and it really makes Emily feel old, but not in a bad way.

“Because we need you,” Rose says.

**-October 2020-**

It takes every single muscle in Emily’s body and several she didn’t know she had to hold onto the lead toward the end of the game. When she sees the ref hold up the sign for four added minutes she almost throws up on the spot. But she doesn’t. She claps her hand and encourages Emily and Ellie and they prepare for a throw-in just past midfield.

She doesn’t remember much about those last four minutes. What she does remember is the second the whistle blows and she turns to find Lindsey’s almost at her already. She remembers the impact of Lindsey hitting her at full force and Lindsey’s arms around her keeping her upright and Lindsey’s voice in her ear.

“I love you,” Lindsey says, and it’s not the first time Emily’s heard it but it’s the first time since they kissed six months ago, and Emily says it back, and they say it over and over until Ellie runs and jumps on them and all three of them topple to the ground in a pile of sweat and dirty jerseys, champions.

**-August 2024-**

Emily doesn’t get to see Lindsey before their quarterfinal game against Brazil.

It’s probably for the best. She’s more nervous than she would be if she were on the bench or the field, and she doesn’t need to be making Lindsey nervous. The game feels like it drags on _forever_. Emily is wedged between Lindsey’s mom and brother and Mike keeps jiggling his leg up and down like he’s a fifteen year old in physics class. She could punch him.

It takes fifty five minutes for someone to score a goal. It’s Brazil, off of a corner kick. Emily sees it happening in slow motion, the way the back post isn’t quite covered enough and AD is too far away to get there in time, and it makes her stomach clench painfully.

Sophie equalizes at the eighty minute mark, right when Emily starts to actually worry about her blood pressure. The team barely celebrates because they’re so busy getting reset to push for the game-winner, and everyone’s standing and it’s so hot in France, it feels like it should be illegal for it to be this hot in _Europe_, and Emily can remember saying something like that to Lindsey in 2019 and making her laugh.

In the second of three minutes of added time, Rose scores. It’s a little bit out of nowhere. It’s right outside the eighteen from the corner of the box, and it reminds Emily a lot of the goal she scored against the Netherlands to win the 2019 World Cup, and it’s just so ridiculously poetic that she laughs out loud. They’re in France again, and Rose has scored that goal again, and suddenly she feels stupid for ever thinking the outcome could have been any different. This is who Rose is. This is who _they_ are. And maybe they really did need her after all.

Rose says as much when they see each other after the game. Sam catches sight of Emily and grabs her around the middle and lifts her up in a hug, swinging her with her feet off of the ground like she’s a little kid. In the background Rose is yelling, and Emily feels twenty five all over again.

“Told you we needed you,” Rose crows. Emily believes her. 

In the first quiet moment she gets alone with Lindsey in France, their friends and teammates are just around the corner, still visiting with family. Lindsey’s hair is wet from the shower and Emily reaches for it, combing her fingers through it and pushing it behind Lindsey’s ears. 

“I’m really glad you’re here,” Lindsey says, reaching for Emily’s hand so that she can hold it.

“I never thought I would be here again,” Emily admits. She’s not afraid to cry in front of Lindsey anymore, but it doesn’t feel like she’s going to, for once. Lindsey looks tired, but not in a bad way. Emily knows that they have four days before the semifinal and almost says that she hopes Lindsey will sleep through two of them, but she knows better. Her eyes drop to Lindsey’s lips and she wets her own, trying to decide if she’s breaking some kind of protocol by making them look too obviously together here, in France of all places.

“Can I kiss--”

She gets halfway through the sentence before Lindsey reaches for the back of her neck and kisses her right there in Paris. It’s a real kiss, the kind of kiss that melts every bone in Emily’s body, and so forceful that Emily sways back and has to hold onto Lindsey’s biceps to stay upright while Lindsey leans her back, almost dipping her, like they’re in a French film and not in matching adidas trackpants.

Emily’s knees are wobbly when Lindsey lets her stand upright again, but nothing hurts anywhere.

“Come on,” Lindsey says, squeezing Emily’s hand, “I’m starving.”

**Author's Note:**

> Okay LISTEN, before anyone gets mad at me, let me point out the 'bittersweet' tag. I can't magically heal Sonny's knee, but I can promise you that by the end of this she will be in a much better place. 
> 
> Come yell at me on Twitter @unbecomings_ :)
> 
> Title/lyrics taken from the ILLENIUM/Jon Bellion song.


End file.
